Man, what books are your cousin looking for for hacking that are 3k? There are tons of programming resources and tools available for free

For example Ghidra is FOSS and readily available (https://github.com/nationalsecurityagency/ghidra)

Same deal with something like Kali (https://www.kali.org/docs/) just the process of bringing a Kali install up and dorking around can be hugely educational

I’d argue that information has never been more available