The Wirth book gives a fairly quick overview that other compiler books can expand on. If you started with (say) the dragon book, you'll be wading through 200 pages about automata theory and parsing algorithms before you even get to anything else. Wirth provides a twenty-page overview, recommends starting with recursive descent parsing, and just moves on to the next issue.

I recommend starting with the Wirth book, then Andrew Appel's _Modern Compiler Implementation in ML_. And don't forget about the exercises!