Insights / Cyber Library
Cyber Library
Jay Carson is Semper Sec’s Cyber Librarian. He reads the cybersecurity, privacy, and AI books our practitioners are already asking about. Each entry below distills his review from ISSA Journal’s "The Cyber Library" column. You get what the book covers, who gets the most from it, and whether it earns a spot on your shelf.
Book reviews.
Fourteen reviews from Jay Carson’s ISSA Journal column, newest first.
Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson · Public Affairs, 2023
Power and Progress
Want to be an AI captain of industry? You must know this book’s strategic concepts.
Opinion on Primary Audience: Current/future captains of industry, politicians who want to be remembered as ‘statespeople,’ and voters.
Jay Carson · ISSA Journal, July/August 2026
Jack Jones & Jack Freund · Elsevier, 2026
Measuring and Managing Information Risk
A FAIR Approach. Second Edition.
Like the Kenny Rogers hit ‘The Gambler,’ you will find many “Aces to Keep” in this book.
Opinion on Primary Audience: Certainly all cybersecurity leaders. If going for an advanced certification like C|CISO, your in-depth knowledge of this topic will give you an edge!
Jay Carson · ISSA Journal, July/August 2026
Anil Ananthaswamy · Dutton, 2024
Why Machines Learn
This book teaches the linear algebra, statistics, and calculus that power modern AI, the math most of us skipped and now need. It builds slowly and pays off. Readers finish with a working grasp of neural networks, kernels, and convolutional networks, not just the vocabulary.
Recommended for: IT leaders and practitioners who want to understand AI past the buzzwords.
O. Sami Saydjari · McGraw Hill, 2018
Engineering Trustworthy Systems
A comprehensive cybersecurity design textbook that still holds up years after publication. It walks through risk assessment, security architecture, and incident response with military grade rigor. Dense in places, but worth the read for any security leader who wants design fundamentals done right.
Recommended for: Cybersecurity leaders and anyone briefing a CISO.
Tim Berners-Lee · Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025
This Is for Everyone
The inventor of the World Wide Web tells its origin story, then turns to a harder question: how to govern the web he built. Equal parts history and privacy argument, written with dry British humor.
Recommended for: General readers and anyone who wants the real story behind internet trivia.
Shoshana Zuboff · PublicAffairs, 2020
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
A foundational, heavily footnoted case against the business model that turns behavior into data and data into prediction products. Dense reading, but the industry treats it as required background on privacy.
Recommended for: Privacy professionals who want the intellectual grounding behind today’s data privacy debates.
Pascal Bornet, Jochen Wirtz, Thomas H. Davenport, David De Cremer, Brian Evergreen, Phil Fersht, Rakesh Gohel, and Shail Khiyara · Self-published, 2025
Agentic Artificial Intelligence
The first AI management book worth recommending. Eight authors with deep credentials cover how AI agents move from automation to autonomy, and what that means for teams that now work alongside them. Easy to read even outside the technical weeds.
Recommended for: Managers and business leaders working with AI agents, not just technical teams.
Daniel Kahneman · Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013
Thinking, Fast and Slow
The book AI researchers keep citing, worth reading firsthand instead of secondhand. Kahneman’s two systems model of decision making explains the cognitive biases every risk and compliance professional runs into.
Recommended for: Anyone who makes judgment calls under uncertainty, which covers most of GRC.
Karen Hao · Penguin Press, 2025
Empire of AI
A meticulously documented account of the race toward artificial general intelligence and its human and environmental cost. The reporting is rigorous even where the author’s frustration with the industry shows.
Recommended for: General readers, especially anyone forming a view on AI policy.
Daniel J. Solove · Oxford University Press, 2025
On Privacy and Technology
If you read one privacy book, make it this one. Solove, one of the field’s leading scholars, walks through the myths that stall privacy regulation and lays out where privacy law needs to go next.
Recommended for: Every IT professional, from CISOs to people just starting in privacy.
Paula Boddington · Springer Nature, 2023
AI Ethics: A Textbook
A serious treatment of AI ethics from a philosopher with deep credentials, not a technologist. Her healthcare and dementia care examples ground abstract ethical questions in real decisions. Worth keeping as a reference.
Recommended for: AI professionals who want more than a surface level ethics conversation.
Christopher Hadnagy · Wiley, 2018
Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking
Written by one of the most skilled human hacking professionals in the field, from direct experience. This is what every defender needs to know about the attack surface that technology alone cannot patch: people.
Recommended for: Every IT professional protecting an organization against social engineering.
Fei-Fei Li · Flatiron Books, 2023
The Worlds I See
An inspirational, non-technical account of one of AI’s key researchers and how visual processing helped build modern AI. Approachable enough for non-technical readers, detailed enough to satisfy anyone who wants the real history.
Recommended for: General readers and anyone who wants an accessible AI origin story.
Edited by Travis Breaux · International Association of Privacy Professionals, 2024
An Introduction to Privacy for Technology Professionals
A dense, exam caliber reference that bridges cybersecurity, privacy, and AI. Written for IAPP’s Certified Information Privacy Technologist exam, but valuable for any practitioner who needs privacy fundamentals across every domain.
Recommended for: Privacy and security practitioners, especially those pursuing IAPP certification.
Suggested reading, on deck.
Titles Jay has flagged for an upcoming review. Not yet rated, but worth knowing about.
Katrina Manson · W.W. Norton & Company, 2026
Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare
Neil D. Lawrence · PublicAffairs, 2024
The Atomic Human: What Makes Us Unique in the Age of AI
Start with the program, not the framework.
Talk with a senior advisor about the decisions, ownership, and operating capability your organization needs next.
A conversation with a senior practitioner, not a sales gatekeeper.