Your right. I learned crypto for an internship at a cryptography lab, so having the reference of the primitives that mere mortals should never touch, as well as a reference to many ideas that both worked and failed was extremely useful. Of course, if you want to learn crypto to use it well in your own (non-crypto) code, than those are probably exactly the qualities you do not want in your reference book.

Not having read (nor the time and inclination to read) the book, what is so bad about it, and what is the difference with the one you do recommend?