how the system operates and its connectivity with the rest of the system is still the same. So those books are still good. but read the man pages first.
look at the man pages for xserver, xinit, X and anything relating to it.
on a normal system it would be installing the xserver, making it run as deamon. install icewm and edit its config files to your liking, edit the .xinitrc file in the user's home directory to start up icewm. and start X with startx or xinit
good luck