Rating: 
Summary: I disagree with the 1 Start someone gave it!
Review: 'fastluck from Tijeras, NM USA' posted a 1 star review for this book, basically the reason why is you could not get the libraries and code to work. I just bought this book after visiting the Webster site and within 10 Minutes of configuring Environment Variables and installing HLA and MASM, I had my first working program. So I am not sure why you could not get it working?
Rating:
Summary: I disagree with the 1 Start someone gave it!
Review: 'fastluck from Tijeras, NM USA' posted a 1 star review for this book, basically the reason why is you could not get the libraries and code to work. I just bought this book after visiting the Webster site and within 10 Minutes of configuring Environment Variables and installing HLA and MASM, I had my first working program. So I am not sure why you could not get it working?
Rating:
Summary: Very good!
Review: A needed a spped review of assembler, and this book really helped a lot.
Very good!
Rating:
Summary: Get this book!
Review: A year ago I grabbed a copy of Jeff Duntemann's Assembly Step By Step book. I was very disappointed with the fact that his book concentrated on 16-bit DOS programming and, frankly, didn't teach very much assembly language. I'd heard of Randall Hyde, anyone who wants to study assembly and searches on the internet for information on assembly has heard of this guy. He has quite a reputation as an "assembly guru". So I got a copy of The Art of Assembly Language. The thing I like about The Art of Assembly is that it gets you programming right away. I don't want to read a couple hundred pages before I can do anything useful. This book concentrates on writing console applications in assembly language. The advantage to this approach is that console apps are easy to write and are portable between Windows and Linux ('portable assembly'! Who woulda thunk that?) At first I was disappointed that this book doesn't cover graphics under Windows. However, the CD-ROM that accompanies the text contains several hundred additional pages of documentation (in PDF and HTML form) that talks about Windows programming in assembly language; the author's web site contains even more information about Windows programming. As that material is a bit complex and lengthy (almost as many pages as the 900+ pages in The Art of Assembly Language) I can understand why it didn't appear in this book in the first place. If you've got Assembly Step By Step by Jeff Duntemann, you'll definitely want to get a copy of this book. It's a great follow-on book to Assembly Step by Step. If you don't have Assembly Step By Step, I'd recommend going straight to The Art of Assembly Language, it covers lots more material, the information density is higher, and the signal to noise ratio is higher. Duntemann claims his book is for beginners who don't know any programming languages at all, whereas The Art of Assembly expects the reader to know at least one high-level programming language. So if you're trying to learn assembly language as your first programming language, you might want to choose Assembly Step By Step; on the other hand, if you already know a high-level language like C or Visual Basic, you'd probably do better with The Art of Assembly Language.
Rating: 
Summary: Good for what it is.
Review: As another reviewer said, this book should be called "The Art of HIGH LEVEL Assembly Language." This is a great book. It is well written and has includes a CD-ROM chock full of good stuff. Problem is that if you want to use MASM, NASM, TASM or some other assembler that uses real ASM you will likely be confused as the HLA stuff that you learned from this book will not totally apply to traditional ASM. If you are wanting to learn ASM and eventually use NASM and other normal assemblers (ie: not HLA) then you might be better off with a book like "Assembly Language for Intel-Based Computers (4th Edition)" by Kip R. Irvine or my favorite "Introduction to 80X86 Assembly Language and Computer Architecture" by Richard C. Detmer.
Rating:
Summary: Good for what it is.
Review: As another reviewer said, this book should be called "The Art of HIGH LEVEL Assembly Language." This is a great book. It is well written and has includes a CD-ROM chock full of good stuff. Problem is that if you want to use MASM, NASM, TASM or some other assembler that uses real ASM you will likely be confused as the HLA stuff that you learned from this book will not totally apply to traditional ASM. If you are wanting to learn ASM and eventually use NASM and other normal assemblers (ie: not HLA) then you might be better off with a book like "Assembly Language for Intel-Based Computers (4th Edition)" by Kip R. Irvine or my favorite "Introduction to 80X86 Assembly Language and Computer Architecture" by Richard C. Detmer.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Assembly Language
Review: I am disappointed that this book doesn't even talk about assembly language. The author has clearly created his own high level wrapper of the language itself and calls it "High Level Assembly", which looks like a mix of assembly, C, and Pascal. The author states that HLA makes assembly easier to learn and it is intended for beginners learning the basics of programming or people coming from a high-level language and going down to a lower one. But why would a beginner start from assembly? And why would a high-level programmer waste time reading a 800+ page book and just get a "preview" of assembly? The book, however, is well-crafted and the author claiming it was developed over a decade or so is definitely true. It is well structured, but the CD contents look like it's put together a bit hastily. I recommend just going to the author's web site as it's more up to date with the latest version of the programs.
Rating:
Summary: It should be named "The Art of High Level Assembly Language"
Review: i bought this book via amazon.com. firstly, it is not the same book as the online version. This book is the condensed version. Lots of unimportant but entertaining stuffs from the online version are gone ! Thus making this book like a reference manual. Perhaps the publisher was trying to cut down on paper costs ? The title of this book is deceiving. Though it talks alot about ASM but its primary focus is HLA. Still, it's a great ASM/HLA book that covers the basics and the advanced stuffs. I would recommend it to anyone who wishes to know the fundamentals of ASM.
Rating:
Summary: If you're a beginner, you'll LOVE this book
Review: I first learned assembly language programming with the 16-bit edition of this book found on the internet. So naturally, I rushed out and bought the hard copy when it became available. My first thought was that "this is not the assembly language I'm used to." This book uses a new type of assembler, a High Level Assembler, for all of the examples. At first, I was completely put off by this approach - it was completely foreign to me. But then I realized that this book was not meant for people like myself who have been programming in assembly for years, instead it was created for people who know a high level language and want to learn assembly. Once I realized this, I began to see this book in a whole different light. The organization is perfect for someone who has a high level language background and is learning assembly for the first time. Although "old-timers" such as myself probably won't find this approach to their liking, I heartily recommend this book to anyone who is learning assembly language for the first time. While I do not have the perspective of learning assembly language using HLA, I am convinced that the author is correct that this is a good approach for beginners approaching the language.
Rating:
Summary: Very satisified
Review: I give this book an A++. I can't put it down. The approach used by Hyde to teach assembly seems to be aimed at everybody, whether you know nothing about assembly, or you've been programming in a bunch of high-level languages for ages. I'm learning more from the AoA material than I've learned my whole life. I feel like Hyde knows how to reach his readers and get his point(s) across very well. Setting up HLA for Windows is very easy and the instructions for doing this are clear. If you get stumped over something, there's even a mailing list you can join to get answers to anything you want, so you're really getting more than a book; you're getting a guarantee that you will *learn* assembly language programming and all of the things that go along with it.
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