http://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softwa..., it's a "general interest non-fiction" book with lots of historical stuff, e.g. coverage of the 8080 and 6500.
I can't find it now, but it reminds me of a MIT Press book for the educated layman that covered electronics, the various generations of semi-conductors (and how at that period TI was the only company to negotiate all of them, this was written at the dawn of the LSI or VLSI era), the critical details of wafer yield and resultant profitability, etc.
Perhaps not the right book for the original poster, but for many people it could be very useful.
