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by aildours 1479 days ago
Here are some books that I've read with some remarks which you may find useful.

- "Cryptography: A Very Short Introduction" by Piper and Murphy - This is a book in the Very Short Introduction series, so is a bit light on the math. If that's what you are looking for though, this is a good resource.

- "Cryptography Made Simple" by Nigel Smart - The choice of topics is quite eclectic (in the best way possible!). For ex. it is the first general crypto book I've read which talks about lattices (most post-quantum world crypto schemes are lattice based) and things like commitments and zero-knowledge proofs. Develops just the right amount of math to talk about a lot of different things.

- "Cryptography: Theory and Practice" by Stinson and Paterson - adequate, covers the usual topics (plus a chapter on post-quantum crypto).

- "Introduction to Modern Cryptography" by Katz and Lindell - basically a reference for the theory side of crypto. Quite math heavy (or to be more accurate, notation heavy, like theoretical crypto tends to be).

- "Real-World Cryptography" by David Wong - I have not read another crypto book which tackles as many topics, it has chapters on e2e encryption, cryptocurrency and hardware crypto. Is a bit too hand-wavey and doesn't properly explain the math sometimes, but it is great for self-learners and people who are looking for a book on topics not covered in other books.

- "Serious Cryptography" by Jean-Philippe Aumasson - from the No Starch Press stable. The exposition is quite good, and finds a decent balance between making it approachable and getting the details right.

- "Understanding Cryptography" by Paar and Pelzl - decent coverage of fundamental primitives (block/stream ciphers, public key encryption, hashes, signatures etc) but feels a bit outdated. For ex. there is a whole chapter on DES.