Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Classic
Comment: Applied Cryptography is surely becoming, if it already isn't, a classic in it's field. While I wish it were more mathematically intense, no doubt, this is *the* book to buy, and more often than not, the book that most people think of when cryptography is mentioned.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The best cryptography book I have ever read
Comment: This book is one of the easiest books there is to read, but the author doesn't leave out important stuff just to make it easy to read. The only negative thing is that sometimes the math is not as well explained as the rest of the book, but it is easy enough to figure out. The author also gives his proffessional opinion on algorithms and aother protocols used in the book and tells about the known security or insecurity of the algorithms in the book. A great, very well written book, for everyon to read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Applied Cryptography
Comment: As a computer science student this book is the best Computer science book I've ever read. It's a
comprehensive encyclopedia of all major algorithms. This book teaches you how safe the alg. really are. Recommended !
Customer Rating:
Summary: An *EXCELLENT* reference book on cryptography!
Comment: If you have *ANY* interest whatsoever in cryptography (public keys, private keys, RSA, government policies (sic), etc), then this is *THE* book for you. Bruce does a very good job of explaining a very difficult subject. The book covers *EVERYTHING*, from A-Z on the subject,so if you want to understand how public keys work, you can read up on that, similarly, if you want to understand how linear feedback shift registers work, there is a section on that also.
Bruce does *NOT* have a very high opinion of our exalted leaders in Washington, which shows in the book, and the style is very conversational, with a number of humorous lines and comments thrown in. This kept me wide awake through all 700 pages.
The bibliography is extensive, and even includes some good books on WWII cryptography and the Enigma machine used by the Germans.
If you only buy 1 book on cryptography, buy this one!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Schneier is to crypto like Fowler is to English
Comment: The mathematics, not to say sheer logic,
is likely to scare a lot of people.
I find when I lend the book that most people go
through quickly and read what might be
called the cryptographic purple patches --
pure prose sections, summing up which
ciphers are weak and which aren't, some of
the history, and such things. The rest they
leave. I've found myself in the position of
trying to explain all this stuff to CEOs and
other execs. It is hard. I wrote a CEO-friendly
summary (www.viacorp.com/crypto.html) and it
worked fairly well. The people who need to
know this are also the hardest to get into the
topic. Maybe Bruce Schneier would like to
try writing a non-mathematical summary for
the intelligent layman -- like Einstein did
in The Evolution of Physics.
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