This does seem like a great book. I haven't read it, but I did enjoy the google tech talk, "From Nand to Tetris in 12 steps": http://video.google.com/videopla

This does seem like a great book. I haven't read it, but I did enjoy the google tech talk, "From Nand to Tetris in 12 steps": http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7654043762021156507# http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7654043762021156507# However, the poster already has an undergraduate degree in CS. I imagine he knows much of this material already. There is story that Kazhdan (a mathematician) would, pointing to a book, tell his graduate students: "You should know everything in this book ... but don't read it!" I haven't figured out how to do this in mathematics (yet), but here is what I would do in CS: buy a $200 Xilinx FGPA kit (or write a hardware simulator), design a CPU, build a compiler and design an operating system for it. When you get stuck or need help look up references, read tutorials, talk to mentors, go online, whatever, etc. You're going to encounter all the same challenges if you read a book like this or take a class, but this way you'll own the problems that come up, and your solutions, rather than having them spoon-fed to you by a teacher or book.