Lifting and Rigging Resources...

[pebbleworm]

A very good and very short book on the subject is "Moving heavy things" by Jan Adkins. Here are some reviews:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27029.Moving_Heavy_Things
It's easy to find and worthwhile. Definitely helped me out on a number of occasions.

 

[Alan Douglas]

From that Brown catalog, this is interesting, a tripod but with two legs fixed, and a single shaft at the top instead of the lashing shown in the Army manual.

 

[pebbleworm]

One thing I liked about the Brown catalog were the lists of cable codes. Sending a letter would take a week or more, and week for a reply. A telegram could do that in less than a day, but was hideously expensive.Edit: to clarify, telegrams charged by the 5 letter "word". Even 100 years ago, time was money. Google books has changed their format (again!) so I can't post a direct link, but go to the book and search for "code". All kinds of nerdy fun.
And one more useful book is "Working Alone":
http://www.amazon.com/Working-Alone...id=1364442210&sr=8-1&keywords="working+alone"
It's another book about thinking through a problem more than a detailed way to do it, but I suspect anyone reading this board has had helper or three who was most useful after you told them "Go sit in the truck".