Worst writing ever

There has never been a more poorly written book, to my knowledge. The subject matter is fascinating and it is hard to imagine a less well-executed explanation of this material. It is difficult to count how many times that concepts are introduced and explained with statements that begin "It is obvious that..." - I've got news for the author, not much of those things are obvious, and smaller books explain the same material in much clearer and accessible language. I personally prefer the writings of Bruce Schneier on the subject. The rough thing is, the professor of the class I'm taking picked this for the textbook... I've had to download errata, search out information online, and buy other books to try to cover the material. One of the exercises is to brute-force attack a misprinted encrypted message, and one has to know to go to the author's website to download the corrected ciphertext. That totally sucks in an $80 book.

Other Reviews

• Good conditon and timely delivery
• Worst writing ever
• aweful
• Not outstanding