The Code Book leads readers on a journey through the history of coding, cryptography, and codebreaking. From primitive to high tech, Singh effectively crafts a narrative that turns cyphers into living, breathing beings that mutate from their humble beginnings as ancient hieroglyphics, into complex mathematical equations, that ultimately land on the shore of Internet surfing — communication by email. The incessant tug-of-war between code-makers and code-breakers kept my eyes darting from page to page as every seemingly unbreakable, gradually more complex code was peeled back to its essence and disposed of resourcefully.

The 1990s were a heady time. The Cold War had ended, and America’s version of liberal capitalism seemed triumphant. And yet, amid the peace and prosperity, anxieties about the project of self-government could be glimpsed beneath the surface. Fast forward to 2023, democracy’s discontent persists. Abetted by pandemic, hyper partisanship, recalcitrant racial injustice, and toxic social media, the discontent is now more acute than it was a quarter century ago— more rancorous, even lethal.

Undefined words have a special power in politics, particularly when they invoke some principle that engages people’s emotions.

“Fair” is one of those undefined words which have attracted political support for various policies. While the fact that the word is undefined is an intellectual handicap, it is a huge political advantage. People with very different views on substantive issues can be unified and mobilized behind a word that papers over their differing, and sometimes even mutually contradictory, ideas. Who, after all, is in favor of unfairness? And who, after all, dares to point out the fallacies of a belief as long as it carries the “intent” for fairness?

What is Justice?

To ask whether a society is just, is to ask how it distributes the resources we prize—income and wealth, duties and rights, powers and opportunities, offices and honors. A just society distributes these goods in a reasonable way; it gives each person his or her due. The hard question begins when we ask what is the reasonable way, what people are due, and why.