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I found this on Google Books: The Fundamentals of Metallurgy

http://books.google.com/books?id=hmvUNpe0j60C&printsec=frontcover&dq=metallurgy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=kotQU-CXJ8WdyQGgoYCADw&ved=0CF0Q6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=metallurgy&f=false

There were a lot of books to choose from on the Google Books Search Result. From Rare Earth Extraction topics, Foundry/Forge practices and on and on and on.

As far as conductivity issues go, my high school chemistry teacher broke it down for me pretty easy.

With regards to elemental metals (i.e. metals found on the periodic table of the elements) The amount of Neutrons and Protons in the atom directly correlate to how conductive the metal is. To simplify things even more; you can kind of gauge this by the location of the element of the table itself. More neutrons and protons mean more conductivity. The atoms with the most Neutrons and Protons are on the bottom rows of their respective families.

To illustrate this point, I'll use Platinum. It's above neigbhors are Palladium, and Nickel. Nickel contains the least neutrons and protons in the family. But thanks to it's abundance in the world, we use it as a commonplace conductor. Though Platinum would theoretically make the better conductor. The same statements apply to Copper, Silver, and Gold.

Hopefully this helps a bit.