[dhosek]

There are three books that are worth looking at to get plain TeX. I’d start with Viktor Eijkhout’s TeX by Topic (which I think is free in PDF on CTAN). Then the TeXbook to really get everything (the PDFs that float around the net are illegal. Please buy your copy. DEK donated his royalties to TUG so your purchase will help support the continuation of things like CTAN and the LaTeX project). And finally, if you really want to dig deep, Stephan v. Bechtolsheim’s four-volume magnum opus, TeX in Practice will tell you more than you ever wanted to know.