Secret Messages: Concealment Codes and Other Types of Ingenious Communication

Collaborators on several previous books about military topics (Day of Destiny; This Is Guadalcanal), authors Butler and Keeney breezily survey the history of codes, ciphers and other forms of covert communication from smoke signals and Morse code to fraternity ties, gang colors and carefully stitched quilts, to name just a few. Since few people knew the Navaho language in 1941, 200 Navaho in the South Pacific coded their own language and radioed messages that sounded like gibberish to the Japanese, while the Dutch underground fooled the Gestapo with window curtains (half-closed = ""Do not enter""). More than 50 years later, a four-word message was hidden in human DNA and transferred atop a single black dot in a business letter. A lexicon reveals the secret short-order lingo used to speed orders at Atlanta's Varsity Drive-In (""Red dog: hot dog with ketchup only""), and there's a list of Secret Service code names (""Tumbler - George W. Bush, Jr.""). Loosely grouped under broad headings like ""Codes in Cloth"" and ""In the Boot,"" these pithy anecdotes should delight dabblers in mystery and espionage, though readers looking for more in-depth analysis of ciphering would be better off opting for historical narratives like Simon Singh's The Code Book. Illus. (Jan. 2)