I have always enjoyed reading programming-language and compiler books and most of them are quite tough on a first-read.
Programming Language Pragmatics is one huge exception. None of the books I have read come close to the clarity that this book exhibits. On many occassions, the choice of words and presentation in this book has made me go 'Wow, I thought I already knew this stuff...'
Besides core topics, it has interesting discussion like concurrency, data-abstraction (object-oriented) and non-imperative programming models (functional and logic).
TOC (with my comments)
Ch. 1 Introduction
Ch. 2 Programming Language Syntax (theory of Regular Expression, Context-Free Grammars, Automata etc)
Ch. 3 Names, Scopes, and Bindings (binding, scope rules, closures etc)
Ch. 4 Semantic Analysis (attribute grammars, attribute flow, syntax tree etc)
Ch. 5 Assembly-Level Computer Architecture (keeping the pipeline full, register allocation etc)
Ch. 6 Control Flow
(expression evaluation, iteration, recursion, nondeterminacy etc)
Ch. 7 Data Types (type checking, pointers and recursive types etc)
Ch. 8 Subroutines and Control Abstraction (stack layout, calling sequences, parameter passing etc)
Ch. 9 Building a Runnable Program (back-end compiler structure, intermediate forms etc)
Ch. 10 Data Abstraction and Object Orientation (encapsulation, inheritance, dynamic method binding, multiple inheritance, the object model of smalltalk)
Ch. 11 Nonimperative Programming Models: Functional and Logic Languages
Ch. 12 Concurrency (shared memory, message passing etc)
Ch. 13 Code Improvement (peephole, redundancy elimination, data flow analysis, loop improvement, instruction scheduling, register allocation etc)
App. A Programming Languages Mentioned
App. B Language Design and Language Implementation
This is a very impressive book; truly one of my best investments in books so far.