"Reflections on Trusting Trust" by Ken Thompson is one of my favorites, and fairly self contained. Most papers by Jon Bentley (e.g. "A Sample of Brilliance") a

"Reflections on Trusting Trust" by Ken Thompson is one of my favorites, and fairly self contained. Most papers by Jon Bentley (e.g. "A Sample of Brilliance") are also great reads and usually pretty short. I'm a frequent contributor to Fermat's Library (https://fermatslibrary.com https://fermatslibrary.com), which posts an annotated paper (CS, Math and Physics mainly) every week. In the annotations you will usually find a concise piece of knowledge that helps you understand some part of the paper without having to spend a long time in the "recursive rabbit hole". For instance, in the Bitcoin paper, there is an annotation with a succinct explanation of the essential cryptography concepts (Hash functions, Public Key Cryptography, Signatures) you need to know to understand the paper. And the nice thing is that if you feel so inclined, you can add your own annotations and make the paper easier to grasp for the next person who reads it :) - Reflections on Trusting Trust (Annotated Version) - http://fermatslibrary.com/s/reflections-on-trusting-trust http://fermatslibrary.com/s/reflections-on-trusting-trust - A Sample of Brilliance (Annotated Version) - http://fermatslibrary.com/s/a-sample-of-brilliance http://fermatslibrary.com/s/a-sample-of-brilliance - Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System - https://fermatslibrary.com/s/bitcoin https://fermatslibrary.com/s/bitcoin