Regarding books-damn right there isn't!
Depending on if I get around to it, I may have a liter or two of 1,4-dioxane (a cyclic diether solvent) to produce if I CBF, so as to avoid opening the brick of sodium metal I have, since its vac-packed in a heat-sealed thick plastic sheath covered in mineral oil, and that sealed package is inside another hermetically sealed package filled with inert gas. It'll have a better shelf life that way than when opened and the remainder (I only need 1-2g, out of a brick almost too large to close my fingers around) then cut perhaps in half, in as few pieces as necessary to fit the remainder of the brick in a jar full of dried, degassed, argon-sparged liquid paraffin or similarly treated (unused) engine oil) with the screw threads wrapped in teflon tape thickly covered in thick, viscous high-vacuum grease.)
So making my own sodium by reducing sodium hydroxide with magnesium dust and igniting it in a closed crucible is preferable, recovering the sodium by grinding the slag in the kitchen blender after filling it with inert gas, and pouring it into dioxane then boiling the dioxane, which separates out the magnesium oxide as dirty looking slag and allows the sodium to coalesce into molten globules protected by the solvent and its vapors. Basically a Mg/NaOH thermite. Just happens that 1,4-dioxane is both easy to make and seems to be uniquely suited for this application. Just need a still, magnesium dust, sodium hydroxide, preferably some magnesium ribbon, if not then a sparkler firework length for an initiator, a crucible or can, and something to block the top off with once the sparkler/Mg ribbon burns down below the height of the whatever it is used to weight the top down and for the dioxane, the still, heat source (no naked flames), good ventilation, preferably an organic filter mask from a welding store and some concentrated sulfuric acid and ethylene glycol (bog cleaner sulfuric is fine, even dyed stuff, and as is antifreeze, as long as it is undiluted, non pre-mixed stuff and based on ethylene glycol. The dye doesn't come over from it or the sulfuric into the dioxane, which is distilled off as its made, by dripping ethylene glycol into hot concentrated sulfuric acid. Not done it yet but it looks pretty easy.
