Reddit reviews Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems

Ross Andersons Security Engineering. Could be a bit outdated in some places, but overall a tremendous read.

Luckily, its available free in here. There's also a kindle and hardcover versions available here.

I'm sort of in the same boat as you, except with an aero and physics background rather than EE. My approach has been pretty similar to yours--I found the textbooks used by my alma mater, compared to texts recommended by MIT OCW and some other universities, looked at a few lists of recommended texts, and looked through similar questions on Reddit. I found most areas have multiple good texts, and also spent some time deciding which ones looked more applicable to me. That said, I'm admittedly someone who rather enjoys and learns well from textbooks compared to lectures, and that's not the case for everyone.

Here's what I gathered. If any more knowledgeable CS guys have suggestions/corrections, please let me know.

• Intro-ish: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson & Sussman
  
• Math: Mathematics for Computer Science by Lehman et al.
  
• Computer Architecture: Computer Systems A Programmer's Perspective by Bryant & O'Hallaron
  
• Algorithms: Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen et al.
  
• Programming Languages: Programming Language Pragmatics by Scott
  
• Computational Theory: Introduction to the Theory of Computation by Sipser
  
• Operating Systems: Modern Operating Systems by Tanenbaum & Bos
  
• Networks: Computer Networks by Tanenbaum
  
• Compilers: Compilers by Aho et al.
  
• Security: Security Engineering by Anderson
  
• Type Theory: Types and Programming Languages by Pierce
  
• AI: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russell & Norvig
  
  Full disclosure: I haven't actually read more than the preface of any of those books. Software engineering topics are more directly applicable to me than CS topics right now, so here are some that I've actually started reading:
  
  
• The Pragmatic Programmer by Hunt & Thomas
  
• Clean Code by Martin
  
• Code Complete by McConnell
  
• Design Patterns by Gamma et al.

I welcome your newly found understanding of the saying "security is hard". Here is your complimentary copy of Security Engineering, take good care of it.

TAOCP is too hard: its like one of those fantasy wishlist items: the kind of thing every computer scientist wishes they had read but never really has the time to. Some nicer books that are gold standards in their respective fields are:

CLRS (Algorithms)

SICP (Just see the top two amazon reviews)

Kernighan and Ritchie (if you want to be a pretty accomplished C programmer and have little to no real C experience before)

Since you mentioned security, Ross Anderson's Security Engineering is a fantastic read, and very easy to parse: you could read it through in less than a week and have a deeply changed view of the structural issues in security: there is little crypto in the book (for that, Schneier is the gold standard) but more discussion about protocols, where protocols fail, real-world protocols like the military classification scheme, etc. It is absolutely fantastic. If you read this and Schneier you'd have a very thorough understanding of the entire security stack.

Kleinberg and Tardos is a much easier read than CLRS when it comes to algorithms, doesn't cover as much, and is very graceful in its explanations. Personally, I love it.

You mention a diverse set of topics, and you're probably not going to find any one book that covers all of them.

For algorithms for cryptography, signatures, protocols, etc. the definitive go to (last I checked) was still Schneier's Applied Cryptography.

For a history of cryptography, I'm fond of Kahn's The Codebreakers, but be forewarned that it is a large book.

For Network Security and Information Assurance concepts, I like Anderson's Security Engineering, but the state of the art changes so rapidly that it's difficult to recommend a book.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0470068523/

Security Engineering by Ross J. Anderson. It is very useful and gives you a 360-degree view from different industries from a security standpoint, this approach encourages you to think out of the box since some ideas from other industries can be useful in another.

So, what book is better? Cryptography Engineering or Security Engineering?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470068523

Awesome Book.

The tangled web is great. I haven't finished it yet but what I've read so far is pretty insightful stuff. Security Engineering: http://www.amazon.com/Security-Engineering-Building-Dependable-Distributed/dp/0470068523/ref=dp_ob_title_bk : probably one of the better titles for security as a whole. I like to think phrack might also be a great resource but it's pretty dated material. Really you'll be learning so much just picking apart existing shit, crashing stuff, making love to your debugger, and just enjoying the shit out of yourself.. books will come secondary but they're still important. :-) Goodluck have fun!

Abstract, in terms of "weird physical threats":

• Disaster Response and Recovery, McEntire
  
  Resilience engineering:
  
  
• Security Engineering, Anderson
  
  IR/DR:
  
  
• Business Continuity, Snedaker