There isn't one in English yet. Shi Dejian's Shaolin 'encyclopedia' is a good record of Shaolin writings and treatises, but it's only in Chinese and fairly anecdotal. Dr. Meir Shahar's work will be an academic tour de force, but he's still working on it and it will be more scholarly than popular. If you were to sum up all my research, it's mostly contemporary - I'm not looking at what happened so much as I'm looking at what's happening, so I only dabble in the historical background for contextual sake. There's a few martial arts books that give some intro material, but for the most part, it's the same old stories of Tamo, Li Shinmen, and the Japanese pirates - more recital than anything else. You should start with that, surely, but once you get past it, things get pretty muddled. The history of Shaolin is so convoluted, especially when you get to the Qing and what happens in the south, that to write something comprehensive is a rather daunting task. It's easy to write something superficial - in fact, I imagine that's what most martial artists would prefer and they would be your main audience. The key to Shaolin research, whether it be history or kung fu, is not to look at one source. You must see the whole picture.