This doesn't actually answer the question, but I always think that people who want to study neural nets should read Marvin Minsky's Perceptrons. It's an academic work. It's short. It's incredibly well written and easy to understand. It shaped the history of neural net research for decades (err... stopped it, unfortunately :-) ). You should be able to find it at any university library.
Although this recommendation doesn't really fit the requirements of the poster, I think it is easy to reach first for modern, repackaged explanations and ignore the scientific literature. I think there is a great danger in that. Sometimes I think people are a bit scared to look at primary sources, so this is a great place to start if you are curious.
Although this recommendation doesn't really fit the requirements of the poster, I think it is easy to reach first for modern, repackaged explanations and ignore the scientific literature. I think there is a great danger in that. Sometimes I think people are a bit scared to look at primary sources, so this is a great place to start if you are curious.