Hi Charles, congradulations on your recent purchase, every one here will be interested in the cost of shipping it stateside. I don't have a suggestion for a book but frequency, or Hz is directly related to engine speed on a generator, you can speed your engine up (within the rim speed of the flywheel diameter) to make 60 Hz, the problem becomes that your voltage is going to go up also, maybe to where it would be unusable. switching from 50 t0 60 Hz was done on old military gensets that would be run both in the states & overseas. I am looking for info on how to install an old military frequency meter now & not having any luck. Phase, as in three phase or single phase is not that difficult to under stand. AC voltage looks like a wave, it rises from zero to the peak positive voltage then falls back thru zero to the peak negative voltage then repeats sixty times a second for 60 hz power, this is why they use the wave smbol for ac voltage. three phase has three hot legs that the peak voltage is 120 degrees out of "phase" from each other. this should not matter to you, since residential power is never 3 phase (hate to say never) single phase power is derived from one leg of three phase power, run thru a transformer (like up on the power pole) that steps it down to 240 volts, the center tap of the transformer is grounded giving you 120 volts from each side of the transformer to ground. Because it all comes from the same "phase" the peaks of the voltages rise & fall together. this is the power you should be concerned with as it is what you will be dealing with. a transfer switch is just a switch that has two places to input power into the switch, one from the power co, the other from the gen set, & one output to the electric load you want to run, a three phase transfer switch will work to run single phase power thru it, though your electrical inspector may not like you using it that way. transfer switches just sense when main power fails, closing a set of contacts that starts your gen set then when the voltage from the gen stablilizes it opens the main power side & closes the generator power side of the switch. I would suggest the local library for books since you don't have to buy them to find out they don't contain the information you are looking for or maybe a course at the community college would help. i hope this helps & doesn't confuse you.
SR