Linkers and Loaders by John Levine is not exclusively about Linux, but it does a great job of walking you through in great detail common formats for executables

Linkers and Loaders by John Levine is not exclusively about Linux, but it does a great job of walking you through in great detail common formats for executables on Linux and the work it takes to get a program running. The manuscript chapters are available at http://www.iecc.com/linker/ http://www.iecc.com/linker/. I loved the book so much I bought a hard copy.