I had this same textbook for the Crypto course I just completed this semester. It's a very good textbook, in my opinion, as the descriptions and examples are really informative. Usually if I couldn't get the material through my professor's lectures, it was sufficient to look it up in the book. However, we did only briefly touch on cryptographic hashes and only a little on Legendre and Jacobi symbols, and not at all on the elliptic curve and other special topics towards the end of the text, so I can't comment on those.
The book does very good job of talking about different algorithms and concepts, often times with a very brief historical introduction, and includes thorough descriptions of various popular/important attacks of those concepts. In general it's a book I'd recommend for an introduction to cryptography. You also learn a fair introductory bit of number theory which I really enjoyed.
I also met Dr. Washington, one of the co-authors of this book, who was a very pleasant and energetic person who really enjoys the topic of cryptography.
By the way, where are you taking this course?
The book does very good job of talking about different algorithms and concepts, often times with a very brief historical introduction, and includes thorough descriptions of various popular/important attacks of those concepts. In general it's a book I'd recommend for an introduction to cryptography. You also learn a fair introductory bit of number theory which I really enjoyed.
I also met Dr. Washington, one of the co-authors of this book, who was a very pleasant and energetic person who really enjoys the topic of cryptography.
By the way, where are you taking this course?