Oct 10 23:04 2003 from Josh 
 1a. "What's this 'security' thing, anyway": Secrets and Lies (by Bruce  
Schneier) 
 1b. "Ha ha.  Very funny.  What's this 'security' thing anyway?": Computer 
 Security, by Matt Bishop 
 1c. "That's well and good, but how do you make a system secure?":  
Security Engineering, Ross Anderson 
 2. "So, I know what I want. I want crypto": Practical Cryptography, (by  
Niels Ferguson. Also with Bruce Schneier) 
 3a. "OK, so what else exists?  (Math scares me)": Applied Cryptography,  
by Bruce Schneier. 
 3b. "OK, so what else exists?  (Math is precise)": The Handbook of  
Applied Cryptography by Menezes, et al 
 4. "How does it work?": Cryptography, Douglas Stinson   
 5. "How did we get here?": Decrypted Secrets, Friedrich Bauer   
 5a. "Why has crypto been important?": The Codebreakers, David Kahn   
    
 These are all _excellent_ books that anyone who is interested in  
security/cryptography should read. 

  I would like to add two more just to give a good idea what's involved  
with making a good crypto algorithm.  These should only be attempted after 
getting through 3b or 4. 
 A1 "I want to learn about AES": The Design of Rijndael, by Daemen and  
Rijmen. 
 A2 "What about that Twofish Algorithm?": The Twofish Encryption Algorithm 
 by Schneier, et al.