Yes, I highly recommend this book. I have a bachelor and master in Computer Science. I worked through this book after finishing my bachelor. I would complete a project a week or so, by just spending a few hours on it in the weekend. The supporting software is really top-notch. Each project comes with extensive tests, and you can be pretty confident in your work if it passes them all. So it's ideal for self-study.

This book is really fun, and it's a great way to step back from your CS education, and get a perspective on all the abstractions upon which software is built.

You'll learn about combinatorial & sequential logic, ALU & memory chips, CPU & von Neumann architecture, machine & assembly language, assemblers, virtual machines, parsing and code generation. The hardware part is built using a freely provided Hardware Simulator and the software part can be tackled in any programming language(s) you choose. You can get started right now by going to the book's website, http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/plan.html, which has some sample chapters and all the tools (like the Hardware Simulator) you'll need to complete these wonderful projects. Each project comes with extensive test cases, giving you immediate feedback on your progress.

So, yes. This is a really enjoyable hands-on book. I wish there were more like it!