Review of 'The Secrets of Station X: The Fight to Break the Enigma Cypher' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Good technical information - probably more than has been released anywhere - if a little dry. Quite a few direct quotes from people who were there during the war, which sets the scene but also muddles the story. The majority of the book is early war; the last few years of the war go by in a rush.
Events in this book don't follow a linear timeline either. Sometimes that is okay - focusing on one technical achievement and results - but often it is just confusing. The book does have more about double agents and misinformation campaigns than I have seen elsewhere. The idea of tracking misinformation back through layers of Hitler's encoding (and thus revealing keys) is pure genius.
Perhaps the biggest evidence of mediocrity is the over three weeks it took me to read this book. Interesting note - station X is not for "x the unknown", …
Good technical information - probably more than has been released anywhere - if a little dry. Quite a few direct quotes from people who were there during the war, which sets the scene but also muddles the story. The majority of the book is early war; the last few years of the war go by in a rush.
Events in this book don't follow a linear timeline either. Sometimes that is okay - focusing on one technical achievement and results - but often it is just confusing. The book does have more about double agents and misinformation campaigns than I have seen elsewhere. The idea of tracking misinformation back through layers of Hitler's encoding (and thus revealing keys) is pure genius.
Perhaps the biggest evidence of mediocrity is the over three weeks it took me to read this book. Interesting note - station X is not for "x the unknown", but for the roman numeral X. It was the 10th station for either the British Foreign Office or Special Operations Executive (opinions vary).