Customer Rating:  
Summary: Great reference book, OK read
Comment: Although this is still considered the bible of cryptography, I read it like a novel and found it only ok, but it serves as an invaluable reference. I find that quoting pages out of this book stops people arguing with me when I talk about Crypto in my job.
Key thing about this book is that it describes many algorithms that you have never heard of and never need to. Having an understanding of what is mainstream and what are the basics will help you.
At the end of the day if you are serious about Cryptography then you really need to get a copy of this.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Comment: The foundations outlined in the first three parts of the book are strengthened with a practical language and I sum up. I received the book few days ago and it impressed me the form in which arrives to the reader, in the personal thing the knowledge of the book they will help me to strengthen my knowledge in cryptography. Maybe with images of digital certificates the book would have bigger back, although for the year of edition it is understandable.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Still good, but starting to be out of date
Comment: This is a highly useful, very clearly and lucidly written, and quite comprehensive coverage of cryptography up through the mid-90s. Unfortunately, quite a few developments have occurred since it was written - for example, the new AES encryption standard is not covered. And some of the coverage of legal and political issues is now obsolete - a lot has happened in this area in the past few years. It's still a very good book, but it needs an update.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent.
Comment: If there's one book I keep referring to again and again, it's this one. It is very well written and a joy to read. Schneier has given us an excellent blend of humour, crypto and great writing.It's not very mathematical (there are other books like the handbook of applied crypto by Menezes et al. for that) and gets straight to the guts of the algorithms, and it's been very helpful when implementing algorithms. Though it's slightly old, I'd recommend this book to anyone starting out on cryptography.
Customer Rating:
Summary: From beginner to advanced
Comment: Pretty good source of information about cryptography. The way it is written guides you through this (sometimes - almost alltimes) difficult terrain.Bruce is trying to bring this knowledge to the masses, and does a good job. It is up to you to continue to more specialized text books or stay at this level.
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