CODE Wars is easily the most detailed account I have read, of the work carried out at Bletchley Park, credited with shortening World War II by up to two years. So secret was the place, that a german bomb which landed nearby had been dropped only by accident by the Luftwaffe.

I attended a security and encryption seminar there several years ago, and the history is reaching out to touch you. This book brought back so many memories of my time there and of the expert tour given by people who had actually worked there in that veil of secrecy.
For the uninitiated, this will be a bit of a long, dry read, but I enjoyed it immensely.
I recommend it to any history enthusiast and gave it four stars.

Not for me. I found the text really dry and dull and just not my sort of history at all which meant I didn’t enjoy it unfortunately

Author John Jackson published the novel “Code Wars: How ‘Ultra’ and ‘Magic’ Led to Allied Victory” in 2011.

I categorize this novel as “G”. The book tells about the code-breaking efforts of Bletchley Park during WWII.

The book tells how Signals Intelligence developed in the UK. It relates the impact of ULTRA messages on the major confrontations with the Germans. It also tells a little about US code-breaking efforts. In particular, it tells about their success with breaking the Japanese 'Magic' code.

I have read other accounts of the success of Bletchley Park. This one gives far more details about the Signals Intelligence process. It also details how the code machines worked.

I enjoyed the 8+ hours I spent reading this 224-page history of WWII code-breaking. I liked this book, but it was a little on the dry side. It is the best 'inside look' at Bletchley I have so far come across. I like the cover art. I give this novel a 4 out of 5.

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This is a useful addition to the growing suite of books that set out the remarkable achievements of a relatively small number of men and women who played a leading, but for many years unrecognised, role in the defeat of the Axis powers in the Second World War. Although the name of Alan Turing is likely to be familiar to many, the teams who were selected and deployed in the massive task of breaking the enciphered messages of the enemy forces comprised many other less well known, but no less brilliant men and women. One of the book’s main strengths relates to the examples of how the codebreakers’ skills were used to ensure that decrypted communications were enabled to influence operational and tactical moves by senior officers, in addition to the more usual strategic or longer term benefits that could flow from such decrypted messages. If there are weaknesses in the narrative these surround the amount of duplication within the text, suggesting perhaps that a rather more robust editing might have been usefully employed. Nonetheless, this is a book that is well worth the time and effort expended in reading it. Recommended.