Most of the problems I've seen in tactics books are check mate in 3 moves, or win a piece by forking in 4 moves, or sometimes you win a pawn. It is always spectacular.

Are there any tactics books that have you trade find a way to trade an isolated pawn for a healthy pawn, or trade off most knights and one bishop and so you can put a knight on a post unchallenged, or maneuver your pieces and pawns around so you can guard one of your pawns from an enemy pile up?

When I'm playing, the small stuff happens much more often. Do you think the skills involved are the same, or are we missing books for that?

  Winning Chess.  Has three move combinations.    Small enough?

Practical Chess Exercises by Ray Cheng might be something that would interest you.  It's a mixture of problems with some small stuff in there.

Check out Predator at the Chessboard. Each type of tactic is introduced in the simplist fashion, and then built on towards tougher problems. Each position is explained in detail, so that you understand everything you should look for and see.

By small, I don't mean how many moves it takes to get the better game. And I have plenty of books with sacrifice combos.

What I mean by small is, I want a book that asks me to win a nice square to put my knight on, or clamp down a on a square that prevents my opponent from developing the queen side pieces in a timely manner, or win a pawn, instead of a book that is all about flashy queen sacrifices leading to checkmate or the winning of a piece.

  Oh, I see, your looking for a strategy trainer book.

http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review644.pdf

I think you are looking for "Can you be a Positional Chess Genius? (Everyman Chess 2002, 144 pages) by IM Angus Dunnington".It is a puzzle book in which the solutions consist not of stunning tactical variations, but rather of positional solutions.

Posts #8 and #10 have been added to my list of stuff to read.