Assembly language was easier too. ;-) I found a book, I think it was published by Howard Sams but sold at Radio Shack, on the Z80 microprocessor. Now I had no particular reason to favor the Z80, but it was available so I bought it. There was another book on TTL logic. The Z80 book was so well written that I gained a grasp of how a microprocessor works, back when there weren't things like pipelines and microcode to blow your mind. But I learned about how pointers work, buses, etc.

The closest thing I'm aware of today, that are actually useful, are the 8 bit PIC chips.