How the hell do computers work?

Petzold _Code_ is simply fantastic. Even if you don’t make it through the very end, the learning curve from the beginning is so gentle that

Annotated Turing is beyond extra credit, interesting historically but probably not directly related to this project.

Ben Eater 8-bit and 6502, videos alone are great, and building along is even more fun

Turing Tumble is pretty fun, but Spintronics is really delightful

OpenCircuits (book) - really great photographs