Customer Rating: 
Summary: Very easy to understand, and complete
Comment: When I read this just after it came out, it was arguably the best, most comprehensive book on the subject. It may still be, but I haven't surveyed the field in the last year. But either way, this book is very easy to read, and makes some fairly complicated stuff easy to understand. This is a subject area that makes it real easy to be dry, boring, and all of that, but this book is none of those things. Applied Cryptography is fun to read, and makes the subject interesting. About 1/2 of the book is stuff anyone interested in the subject, or anyone that needs to implement some form of encryption or digital signatures will find very useful. The other half is the underlying algorithms and mathematics behind it, which to be honest I didn't read and didn't need to know to do my job. But this is a great book, and has both sides of the story.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Great fun
Comment: This book is readable introduction to real cryptography. It covers a wide range of topics (block and stream cyphers and hashing and random number generation algorithms) in enough depth, and with sufficient theoretical foundation, to give the reader an honest overview of the field. The last section contains code for many of the algorithms and electronic versions are available through Schneier's web site.Throughout the book Schneier manages to include current references to the inevitable political and legal issues. These references are discussed in an engaging manner and without letting them hog the spotlight. On the other hand, in a fast-moving field like cryptography, they are beginning to get a bit long in the tooth. The book was originally published in 1996 and many of the remarks are noticeably dated (though, perhaps, historically interesting). Printings before the fifth are also riddled with errors. Fortunately, good errata are available at Schneier's website. They are essential: if you find yourself thinking "That can't be right", it probably isn't. Read this book first. Without some college level mathematics you may have to skim some of the chapters; still, you can probably curl up on your couch and read it cover to cover. If, afterwards, you get hooked into following up with Stinson's "Cryptograpy", or Menezes "Handbook of Applied Cryptography", don't say I didn't warn you!
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Best book on cryptography ever
Comment: This is Bible, Torah and Koran of Cryptography.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Encyclopaedic, Thorough yet Accessible
Comment: This is a solid technical book, of very high quality. Bruce Schneier broke new ground in getting cryptographic algorithms to the masses when he published this (the cryptography literature is not nearly as accessible). This book is geared towards people who want to make informed technical decisions regarding cryptography and perhaps towards implementors of cryptographic algorithms. People reading this book are expected to have some mathematical and software development background. His more recent, but less technical Secrets and Lies is more accessible and worth a look if you want a more qualitative treatment of security.
Customer Rating:
Summary: ask question
Comment: is there any twofish implementation in this books. I want to look for the implementation and i haven't got it yet
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