Customer Rating:  
Summary: A good reference
Comment: I may not intend to read this book from cover to cover but would rather use it as a reference. As an engineer I like chapter 2 Shannon's Theory which gives an answer to why a cryptosytem is secure.
Personally I am doing the job related to network security and perfer to recommend the book by C. Kaufman, R. Perlman, and M. Speciner:Network Security: Private Communication in a Public World, Second Edition.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good book after Schneier's Non-Mathematical Treatment
Comment: If you are an engineer trying to learn crypto, maybe get a book on number theory to go with this book. It'd be nice if there were fewer errors and more worked out problems, as well.
Overall a good effort but written by a mathematican so you need a book like Schenier's that explains how to use the tools. Maybe Scheier is the one I'd read first. Then read Stinson's to understand how the tools work because Scheier's book is mathematically barren.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Volume III of the Definitive Work
Comment: This book takes a fairly rigorous mathematical approach to cryptography. It is intended for upper level undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics, computer science and engineering. I suspect only the quite mathematically inclined computer science and engineering students will find this book helpful. This is not a Boy Scout how to do secret messages book, but a book that will give the professional the data needed to implement cryptographic software, and the mathematician hints on both code breaking and creating.
This is the third edition of this book. With the second edition, the author got rid of several several subjects that were not right at the core of cryptography, with the intend of doing a second volume. Instead, the art and scienct of cryptography has changed so fast during the past few years that a two volume approach isn't practical. Instead, he has produced this third edition that picks back up many of the subjects from the first edition. All of the material in this edition has been extensively re-written to incorporate the latest theories and practices.
In recent years the use of cryptography has increased by several orders of magnitude. Every time we buy something with a credit card, use on line banking, send a password to access e-mail, we use cryptography. With this growth, the interest at software companies, universities, and other places has grown accordingly and this text has become the standard by which others are compared.
Highly recommended for the serious student.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Could be a great book .... but it falls short
Comment: As other people have pointed out, this is not a mathematics book, and it is not an algorithm (recipies) book. It could be a great book for people that are interested in learning these tools to actually use them, either in a research or product development context (something besides homework). Unfortunately, the number of typos, in key mathematical expressions AND PORTIONS OF THE EXPLANATIONS is staggering. Go to the author's web page and you will find that some chapters, like 4 for example, average more than one typo per page (and some of these 'typos' are full sentences, or math expressions that do not look like anything that is actually printed on the page). If you do not have that errata sheet handy, you will waste a lot of time trying to understand the text, or trying to solve the exercises. If you are trying to learn from this book, without attending a class and without the errata, you will simply give up. It is a real shame because it has all the makings of a great book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Book on Cryptography
Comment: This book is well suited for software developers, students, and research scientists alike. The first edition has proven to be an invaluable source of information on cryptology. The second edition covers a subset of the material from the first edition. However, the text has been revised, expanded, and new material has been added that covers more recent results in the field. A forthcomming companion book has been promised that will cover the remaining material (e.g., zero-knowledge proof systems). Readers that are interested in combinatorics should also consider picking up a copy of "Combinatorial Algorithms: Generation, Enumeration, and Search" by Stinson and Kreher.
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