There is a book entitled Old Electrical Wiring Maintenance and Retrofit by David E. Shapiro (Was published in New York by McGraw-Hill in 1998. Possibly out of print now.)
It has a nice brief history and then gets deeper into the individual changes/additions to the NEC over the years.
There are some nice (B&W) photos inside, as well as strategies for dealing with various scenarios one might encounter when facing a retrofit job.
Amazon.com has some pages available for (free) preview...
