World War I is explored from an interesting perspective in Gary Mead's The Doughboys: America and the First World War, published in 2000. Readers may be surprised to learn about how the United States's own allies tried to use American involvement in favor of their respective nations as well as against the enemies. This book is lengthy but reads more like a novel than a history text.

Richard Rhodes's 1995 publication of Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb gives readers an inside look at "super" science, postwar politics, espionage, and moral challenges all rolled into one. This book is different in its account of the bomb's creation in that it not only provides the facts of scientific discovery, but also the personality quirks and sometimes odd details of the physicists who brought it about.

Most people recall the photograph taken...