Applied Cryptography is pop science. It's a book written breezily and unseriously, a sort of whirlwind tour of a subject its author is fascinated and engaged with, but without rigor. Approached on those terms, it's a fun read. I sure enjoyed it when it first came out.
Unfortunately, it's also a showcase for what can go wrong if you provide too much technical content in a pop science book. What happened with A.C. is similar to what you'd think might happen in a book about home anesthesiology, complete with resources to show you how you'd put someone under from first principles and household chemicals.
On the whole, because it's generally taken by its readers as authoritative and prescriptive, A.C. has done a lot more harm than good.
Cryptography Engineering is imperfect, too. But it was written seriously, accepting and engaging with the fact that readers will use it as a guidebook to serious implementation. It's a much safer book than Applied Cryptography.
Moreover, if you're serious about engaging with crypto in your career, it's a better book. You won't learn much about what goes wrong with crypto from Applied Cryptography, which happily documents a number of weak or even broken constructions and describes protocols and techniques that were obsolete years before the book was published. Cryptography Engineering is aware of much of the cryptographic literature, and almost every chapter concerns itself first and foremost with what goes wrong with crypto constructions. You can read it "inside out" as a sort of first course in attacking cryptosystems.
Unfortunately, it's also a showcase for what can go wrong if you provide too much technical content in a pop science book. What happened with A.C. is similar to what you'd think might happen in a book about home anesthesiology, complete with resources to show you how you'd put someone under from first principles and household chemicals.
On the whole, because it's generally taken by its readers as authoritative and prescriptive, A.C. has done a lot more harm than good.
Cryptography Engineering is imperfect, too. But it was written seriously, accepting and engaging with the fact that readers will use it as a guidebook to serious implementation. It's a much safer book than Applied Cryptography.
Moreover, if you're serious about engaging with crypto in your career, it's a better book. You won't learn much about what goes wrong with crypto from Applied Cryptography, which happily documents a number of weak or even broken constructions and describes protocols and techniques that were obsolete years before the book was published. Cryptography Engineering is aware of much of the cryptographic literature, and almost every chapter concerns itself first and foremost with what goes wrong with crypto constructions. You can read it "inside out" as a sort of first course in attacking cryptosystems.