Human Smoke
I probably never would have read this book had it not been so highly recommended by various people I respect.
This is NOT your usual history book. The writer makes very few comments. It is a collection, albeit a very select collection, of news stories with short time line narratives. It is very well done, in fact. It is all about WWII and the prelude to it and the final days.
It takes you from the beginning to the end in news stories and letters and personal notes written by the leaders who were there in the middle of it. It is a condemnation of the human experience.
It shows what idiots run the world and how misguided and frail and lame and stupid and ignorant they really are. They are just people! They are just like everyone else who ever lived.