The books L. Francis Herreshoff wrote are a
must.  The first book to get is "Sensible Cruising Designs", which
includes about 20 designs.  It describes the H-28 in great detail,
including plans, details, and the philosophy of her design.  The book
was published by International Marine Publishing Company in paperback.

The next book to enjoy is "The Compleat Cruiser", published in
paperback by Sheridan House.  It's a fictional cruise of a 26-foot
catboat and an H-28 type who do their cruising in just the right way,
according to LFH.  Although his agenda is fairly visible, I still
enjoyed reading it and dreaming about my own cruising very much.

A deep and hard-core book is "The Commonsense of Yacht Design", findable
at great expense ($50 - $150!) from book collectors and used book sellers.
He goes into great detail on yacht design and its history.  I loved the book.

As an example in this last book, LFH is a fan of larger mains and smaller
jibs without winches and possibly with a small boom or club, to make
crew work easier.  However the current faith is for small mains and
giant jibs with giant winches.  I don't believe it's faster, but rather it is
slightly favored by handicapping rules (especially IOR) and the macho of
Big Winches.  In this book he gives the history of handicapping rules and
their reactions to and causes of various design trends.  Most of the latest
arguments, new handicapping rules, and inventions of this decade have been
reinvented every 30 years or so since the 1880's!  For instance, J-boats
(makers of the J-24) recently promoted is a fast and weatherly 30-foot
J-boat with a tall main and smaller jib to make cruising easier and more
pleasant.  This idea was first expressed clearly in the 1880's by a committee to
improve the handicapping rules.  Instead of saying that a yacht should
be fast for her waterline length, displacement, or sail area, they said that
"a yacht should be comfortable for her normal complement
of crew to live on, have plenty of deck space, and have
the most speed for the effort exerted by her crew."
That last quality is the clearest and most balanced
goal of yacht design I've ever heard.

I don't know whether these books are still in print, but you can try
the internet.  www.abebooks.com is the best used book search engine my
wife has found, and yahoo has a general used book search engine.

LFH was quite a character, and if you like reading,
you'll enjoy these.  Enjoy!
 

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