[koepked]

I concur, as strongly as I can, with this. This book gave me sight in a lot of areas I in which I was previously blind. Also, I couldn't put it down. I was high on insight the entire time I read it. I should point out, though, that while I did already program when I read this, I hadn't taken any CS courses, so YMMV. That being said, this book was enough to get me on the path to self-taught assembly and embedded programming.