Ask HN: What are the best books on low-level programming

"Programming from the Ground Up" is a really fantastic book that starts with some architecture, assembler and executable file format. Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11702025

Peter Norton and John Socha - Peter Norton's Assembly Language for the IBM PC.

Hideously outdated, and has practically no real world application any more, but is conversely an incredibly lucid, explanatory, and beatifully written as a guide to 16-bit Assembly language on the IBM (and compatible) PC - Guides you through first examinations of registers and memory through to creating a low-level hard disk editor.

Pop open DosBox, download MASM, and see what you can break!

Currently going for $3 on Amazon - worth a pop for that price if only for a cursory look!

https://www.amazon.com/Assembly-Language-Brady-programming-l...

Can't get more low level than ASM

http://www.agner.org/optimize/

Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book. He's also got a few "Zen of ..." books:

http://www.drdobbs.com/parallel/graphics-programming-black-b...

The Art of Computer Programming, perhaps?