Yes — is well worth reading. It’s not technical at all (or maybe it was, but I don’t think so, and one can always get it from the library, and/or just skip stuff that seems too arcane) and was, as you said, fascinating.
As long as it's in words and not block-long equations, like some of Chomsky's stuff, I can manage! I have a fairly strong linguistics background. :)
My favorite sections were on Michael Ventris's decipherment of the Linear B script, and on the Rongorongo script once used on Easter Island.
The author's descriptions of some of the failed attempts to decipher the latter are quite amusing.