[leonk]

The history of public key encryption, and of encryption in general is covered pretty well in this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Code-Book-History-Code-breaking/...

[dirktheman]

I was going to post a link to this book, but to my delightment someone beat me to it...

This book is highly recommended if you want to know more about encryption, but are afraid of the mathemathical concepts. It starts of super easy with a simple caesar shift (the kind of secret code children use) and builds from there. I'm a total math noob but thanks to this book I wrote a simple public-key encryption service. The book contains tons of examples and even challenges, if you're up to it.

If you haven't read this book, go on and do so!

[joelanders]

Steven Levy's _Crypto_ (referenced in the article) is quite good (as is everything he writes).

[B5geek]

I will second this recommendation. I was about 1/3 of the way through the book before I realized it was a 'historical' book and not a fiction.

I have in the many years since I read this one, become quite the fan of all his works.