I don't know about books, but I learned about this in my first year in university (for CS-ish), and it was fascinating :) I think the missing link you're looki

I don't know about books, but I learned about this in my first year in university (for CS-ish), and it was fascinating :) I think the missing link you're looking for is the flip-flop [0]. It's a clever arrangement of logic gates (just AND, OR, NOT, etc) that can store a bit. The concept of a clock signal is very closely related. Then you learn about multiplexers and you realize that if you put a bunch of flip-flops that can store a bit behind a multiplexer [1], suddenly you have something that looks like very primitive RAM with a data and address bus! At the time it blew my mind that you can (conceptually, at least) take a bunch of logic gates, arrange them in clever ways, and arrive pretty quickly at much "higher level" concepts like memory on an address bus. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_(electronics)#D_flip-flop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_(electronics)#D_flip... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplexer#Digital_multiplexers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplexer#Digital_multiplexe...