//Topic
Best History books
10 books in our catalog cover History, ranked by rating. Each entry is an opinionated review with who the book is for and who should skip it.
01 · 2011
Kingpin
How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground
Kevin Poulsen's reconstruction of Max Butler's career — from white-hat consultant to running CardersMarket, the carding forum that consolidated the early-2000s underground — and the FBI investigation that finally took him down.
Beginner5/5Kevin Poulsen02 · 1989
The Cuckoo's Egg
Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage
Clifford Stoll's first-person account of investigating a 75-cent accounting discrepancy at LBNL that turned into a year-long pursuit of a KGB-paid intruder across early-internet networks.
Beginner5/5Clifford Stoll03 · 2019
Cult of the Dead Cow
How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World
Joseph Menn's history of cDc — the Texas-rooted hacking collective that coined 'hacktivism', shipped Back Orifice, and threaded its way through three decades of the security industry's coming-of-age.
Beginner4/5Joseph Menn04 · 2016
Dark Territory
The Secret History of Cyber War
Fred Kaplan's policy-side history of US cyber capability, from Reagan-era panic about WarGames to the institutional buildup of NSA's offensive arm and the political fights over its use.
Beginner4/5Fred Kaplan05 · 2014
@War
The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex
Shane Harris on the entanglement of US military doctrine, the intelligence community, and private contractors after cyberspace was declared the fifth warfighting domain.
Beginner4/5Shane Harris06 · 2014
Spam Nation
The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime — from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door
Brian Krebs's investigative deep-dive into the Russian-speaking pharma-spam economy of the late 2000s — the affiliate networks, the rivalries, and the people who ran them.
Beginner4/5Brian Krebs07 · 2012
We Are Anonymous
Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency
Parmy Olson's reconstruction of LulzSec, AntiSec, and the early-2010s Anonymous moment — the chat logs, the infighting, the Sabu turn, and the FBI takedown that ended the era.
Beginner4/5Parmy Olson08 · 2011
Ghost in the Wires
My Adventures as the World's Most Wanted Hacker
Kevin Mitnick's first-person account of his 1990s social-engineering and phone-system intrusions, foreword by Steve Wozniak. Self-promotional in tone but a primary source on a defining era.
Beginner4/5Kevin Mitnick, William L. Simon09 · 2005
The Art of Intrusion
The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders and Deceivers
Mitnick and Simon's follow-up to The Art of Deception: third-party stories from working hackers — casino slot exploits, prison-network breaches, post-9/11 intelligence ops — reconstructed and annotated by Mitnick.
Beginner4/5Kevin Mitnick, William L. Simon10 · 2003
Hacking the Xbox
An Introduction to Reverse Engineering
Andrew "bunnie" Huang on the original Xbox: hardware modding as the entry path into reverse engineering, plus a frank account of the legal fight that followed.
Intermediate4/5Andrew "bunnie" Huang