A must-read introductory text for beginners

...and those who only ever learned high-level programming languages and do not understand their own machine. I recently discovered this book and it opened my eyes to how blind I have been. It gently guides a person that has just learned the essentials of programming from logic gates to hardware architecture to machine language to assembly to writing a barebone OS, virtual machine, and a high-level programming language.

The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken

Google talk video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7654043762021156507#

I actually bought this a few years ago when they had a couple at my local bookshop. It's fine as far as it goes, but is really more suited for beginner level. I took EE so I gained no satisfaction from the first half; the latter half was more palatable, but I can't say it was the eye opening experience OP was describing.