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Many written communications, from commercial secrets to military orders and information, are secret in the sense that only authorized people should see them. Hence, the need for codes and ciphers, where one can translate a message into what looks like gibberish. It only can be read by someone who knows the code or cypher. – or by someone who has figured out how to decipher the message! We have records of codes and ciphers back at least to Roman times. In Secret and Urgent, Fletcher Pratt goes through the history of codes and ciphers from the ancient Roman Empire up to the 1930s. What is unique about this high school or higher-level book is the history Pratt includes. His book is more about the impact of codes and ciphers on important historical events than about how to analyze the code itself. Pratt gives many historical examples. A reader who has had their interest in cryptology kindled by reading Alvin’s Secret Code by Clifford Hicks, the second in the famous Alvin Fernald series, will some years later become fascinated by the subject by reading Secret and Urgent by Fletcher Pratt. The next step for this reader is to find and read a good book about the breaking of the German Enigma code and the Japanese naval codes in World War II.
The author of Secret and Urgent, Fletcher Pratt (1897 to 1956), was an interesting man. He wrote The Monitor and the Merrimac in the American Landmark series. He also wrote one of the best All About books, All About Famous Inventors and Their Inventions, as well as All About Rockets and Jets. However, the majority of his writing was in military history for adults. He was an expert in the Civil War, the War of 1812, and naval military history in general, but he was also well-known for his fantasy and science fiction stories and novels.