// Comparison
Serious Cryptography vs The Code Book: Which Should You Read?
Two cybersecurity books on Cryptography, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.
A Practical Introduction to Modern Encryption
Jean-Philippe Aumasson
Jean-Philippe Aumasson's working introduction to modern cryptography, written for engineers who need both intuition and enough mathematical depth to evaluate the choices a library is making for them.
The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
Simon Singh
A narrative history of cryptography from Caesar ciphers to public-key, told through the people and the wars that turned on broken codes. Still the best on-ramp to why crypto matters.
Read this if
Skip this if
Key takeaways
- Modern primitives can be understood by engineers, given the right framing — Aumasson's choice to bound the math is the book's defining design decision.
- The 2nd edition (2024) covers post-quantum cryptography (Kyber, Dilithium, SPHINCS+) at the depth a deploying engineer actually needs.
- The chapters on hash-function attacks (length extension, multi-collisions) are the clearest in print and explain why half of the production bugs in HMAC-adjacent code happen.
- Most ciphers fall not to brute force but to human pattern and procedural sloppiness.
- Breaking Enigma was an industrial, organizational effort, not a lone-genius moment.
- Public-key cryptography solved the key-distribution problem that had constrained secrecy for millennia.
How they compare
Serious Cryptography and The Code Book are both rated 5/5 in our catalog. Pick by topic preference and reading style rather than by rating.
Serious Cryptography is pitched at intermediate level. The Code Book is pitched at beginner level. Read the easier one first if you're not yet comfortable with the topic.
Serious Cryptography and The Code Book both cover Cryptography, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.