10 books like The New Hacker's Dictionary

The Journal of IHTFP (look up that acronym!) is a delightful introduction to the original hacking scene at MIT, where hacks were elaborate, extremely clever student pranks—handing out colored cards at a Harvard-Yale football game to spell MIT rather than BEAT YALE when raised by eleven hundred Harvard fans, for example, or sneaking a power supply, multi-piece wooden frame, and the outer metal parts of a Chevrolet Cavalier atop the school’s Great Dome, so it appeared that the building was mounted by a real police cruiser, complete with flashing lights and boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts. The oversized book includes numerous photographs. Now out of print, it has been replaced by Nightwork by T. F. Peterson, which includes more recent hacks.

Hackers is a classic account of the computer revolution, centered on the pioneering tinkerers, gamers, social theorists, entrepreneurs, and other explorers who made military and corporate technology personal. These are not hackers in the criminal sense most people understand the term today, but men (and a few women) like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others far less famous. Their interwoven biographies are brilliantly researched and reported, underpinned by what Levy calls a common “hacker ethic” whose tenets dominate our economy, politics, and culture today.

We Are Anonymous, along with Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous by Gabriella Coleman, explores the politics and personalities of the best-known real-world hacktivist group, Anonymous, how it rose to prominence and power, its impact and influence, and the government machinations that ultimately turned members against each other. Its pages reveal hackers at their most human—brilliant, idealistic, vulnerable, and conflicted.

A famous hacker’s real-life story, told from his own perspective, Ghost in the Wires explains how criminal hackers think and act and the diverse techniques they use, no keyboard necessary—all, in this case, with little motive beyond a compulsion to explore and exploit. The hacking community has no bigger characters than Kevin Mitnick and no better first-person accounts of the art of “social engineering,” or human hacking—manipulating people (including, in Mitnick’s case, the FBI and other would-be pursuers) to your own advantage.

Regular expressions are the cornerstone of command line wizardry.

They are used in pretty much all command-line tools, and all programming languages.

If you read this book, you'll have a deep understanding of what's going on, and the knowledge to go from hand-waving and guessing your way through regular expression writing to the mastery the book promises.

One of the books that I open at least once a year, and which I always recommend to students and mentees. Security Engineering isn’t a book (only) about cryptography, yet one about a topic that a cryptographer should know well: security engineering, or the design, implementation, and testing of systems that must be reliable in hostile and adversarial environments. Cryptography is indeed often just a small, yet critical, component of larger security systems. A good cryptographer must therefore not limit themselves to their field, but understand the risks, practical constraints, and functional needs of the environment where cryptography is integrated. Anderson’s book is the undisputed reference in that space.  

This book is an awesome deep dive into the way the computer hardware and the low-level software systems of computers really work. As a programmer, this was extremely interesting to me. It was fascinating to see how computers evolved over time and how the programming we do today is built on top of so many other concepts and ideas.

This book was super fun to read and I couldn’t put it down. I like doing the exercises and thought experiments and really didn’t want the book to end. By the end of the book I felt like I really understood how the underlying hardware worked and I found many useful ideas I could apply to my work as a software developer.

I’ve been a fan of Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author Dave Barry for decades, and his Lessons From Lucy book surprised me — not because it’s hilarious (of course it is!), but because it’s so profoundly moving. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since I read it. Here’s what inspired the book: When Barry turned 70, he reflected on how unhappy he was about aging — in stark contrast with his blissed-out senior dog, Lucy. Barry noticed that Lucy was always ready for fun new adventures, eager to make new friends, and able to live in the moment. In this gem of a book, Barry explores the realities of the human condition and zeroes in on the real keys to contentment in life, all thanks to the love of a dog. 

I met Bill Bryson once, and we subsequently exchanged a few letters.

‘Knowing him’ gave an extra dimension to his writing and humour, because he’s acerbic with the pen and yet so gentle and shy as a person.

When we met, he was giving a talk on the importance of hedgerows in our ‘Green and Pleasant Land’, and he has always inspired me to appreciate the privilege of being British (He is American).

Sometimes it can be hard to remember..! One thing is for sure: British humour is unique, and I will never fail to appreciate that. Neither Here Nor There was the first Bryson I read, but you could pick any of his travel works.

He’s got such a wonderful style and humour, you can’t really go wrong.

I borrowed Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim from a friend years back, and instantly fell in love with David Sedaris. 

I could have picked any book by Mr. Sedaris - they are all brilliant and have been hugely influential in my writing journey—but I vividly remember reading the chapter "Six to Eight Black Men", which beautifully illustrates a Dutch Christmas cultural tradition and shows it up in all its whacky weirdness, solely through storytelling and observation. Alone in my bedroom, I remember having to put the book down because I was howling with laughter. 

David Sedaris is the master of pinpointing the ludicrous, seemingly without effort or trying to be funny. 

He is one of my heroes. I think I became a bit obsessed.