Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (thing)

I used this book for my introductory CompSci class. It was a pretty good book, but I had a hard time understanding some of it. Definitely will require a re-read after I understand a few more things. Here's the table of contents for you viewing pleasure.

Table of Contents:

Contents
Foreword
Preface to the Second Edition 
Preface to the First Edition 
Acknowledgments 
1 Building Abstractions with Procedures 
  1 The Elements of Programming 
    1 Expressions 
    2 Naming and the Environment 
    3 Evaluating Combinations 
    4 Compound Procedures 
    5 The Substitution Model for Procedure Application 
    6 Conditional Expressions and Predicates 
    7 Example: Square Roots by Newton's Method 
    8 Procedures as Black-Box Abstractions 
  2 Procedures and the Processes They Generate 
    1 Linear Recursion and Iteration 
    2 Tree Recursion 
    3 Orders of Growth 
    4 Exponentiation 
    5 Greatest Common Divisors 
    6 Example: Testing for Primality 
  3 Formulating Abstractions with Higher-Order Procedures 
    1 Procedures as Arguments 
    2 Constructing Procedures Using Lambda 
    3 Procedures as General Methods 
    4 Procedures as Returned Values 
2 Building Abstractions with Data 
  1 Introduction to Data Abstraction 
    1 Example: Arithmetic Operations for Rational Numbers 
    2 Abstraction Barriers 
    3 What Is Meant by Data? 
    4 Extended Exercise: Interval Arithmetic 
  2 Hierarchical Data and the Closure Property
 
    1 Representing Sequences 
    2 Hierarchical Structures 
    3 Sequences as Conventional Interfaces 
    4 Example: A Picture Language 
  3 Symbolic Data 
    1 Quotation 
    2 Example: Symbolic Differentiation 
    3 Example: Representing Sets 
    4 Example: Huffman Encoding Trees 
  4 Multiple Representations for Abstract Data 
    1 Representations for Complex Numbers 
    2 Tagged data 
    3 Data-Directed Programming and Additivity 
  5 Systems with Generic Operations 
    1 Generic Arithmetic Operations 
    2 Combining Data of Different Types 
    3 Example: Symbolic Algebra 
3 Modularity, Objects, and State 
  1 Assignment and Local State 
    1 Local State Variables 
    2 The Benefits of Introducing Assignment 
    3 The Costs of Introducing Assignment 
  2 The Environment Model of Evaluation 
    1 The Rules for Evaluation 
    2 Applying Simple Procedures 
    3 Frames as the Repository of Local State 
    4 Internal Definitions 
  3 Modeling with Mutable Data 
    1 Mutable List Structure 
    2 Representing Queues 
    3 Representing Tables 
    4 A Simulator for Digital Circuits 
    5 Propagation of Constraints 
  4 Concurrency: Time Is of the Essence 
    1 The Nature of Time in Concurrent Systems 
    2 Mechanisms for Controlling Concurrency 
  5 Streams 
    1 Streams Are Delayed Lists 
    2 Infinite Streams 
    3 Exploiting the Stream Paradigm 
    4 Streams and Delayed Evaluation 
    5 Modularity of Functional Programs and Modularity
      of Objects 
4 Metalinguistic Abstraction 
  1 The Metacircular Evaluator 
    1 The Core of the Evaluator 
    2 Representing Expressions 
    3 Evaluator Data Structures 
    4 Running the Evaluator as a Program 
    5 Data as Programs 
    6 Internal Definitions 
    7 Separating Syntactic Analysis from Execution 
  2 Variations on a Scheme--Lazy Evaluation 
    1 Normal Order and Applicative Order 
    2 An Interpreter with Lazy Evaluation 
    3 Streams as Lazy Lists 
  3 Variations on a Scheme--Nondeterministic Computing 
    1 Amb and Search 
    2 Examples of Nondeterministic Programs 
    3 Implementing the Amb Evaluator 
  4 Logic Programming 
    1 Deductive Information Retrieval 
    2 How the Query System Works 
    3 Is Logic Programming Mathematical Logic? 
    4 Implementing the Query System 
5 Computing with Register Machines 
  1 Designing Register Machines 
    1 A Language for Describing Register Machines 
    2 Abstraction in Machine Design 
    3 Subroutines 
    4 Using a Stack to Implement Recursion 
    5 Instruction Summary 
  2 A Register-Machine Simulator 
    1 The Machine Model 
    2 The Assembler 
    3 Generating Execution Procedures for Instructions 
    4 Monitoring Machine Performance 
  3 Storage Allocation and Garbage Collection 
    1 Memory as Vectors 
    2 Maintaining the Illusion of Infinite Memory 
  4 The Explicit-Control Evaluator 
    1 The Core of the Explicit-Control Evaluator 
    2 Sequence Evaluation and Tail Recursion 
    3 Conditionals, Assignments, and Definitions 
    4 Running the Evaluator 
  5 Compilation 
    1 Structure of the Compiler 
    2 Compiling Expressions 
    3 Compiling Combinations 
    4 Combining Instruction Sequences 
    5 An Example of Compiled Code 
    6 Lexical Addressing 
    7 Interfacing Compiled Code to the Evaluator 
References 
List of Exercises 
Index