Looking for general history or general us history. I actually have a good memory for how people lived and how historic cultures worked, just not History Test Facts. Like for instance I know a ton about ww2 era in England and Germany and Poland, but I am very hazy on the reason for everyone starting the war and what years and such.
The trigger for WW2 can be one of several things, depending on how far you want to go. Its easy to say Hitler's invasion of neighboring countries started WW2, but you could look back to the end of WWI and say that was the trigger for the sequel.
US President Wilson was pretty ill by the end of WWI and unable to broker an end to the first war that would have been a lot less harsh on Germany than what was actually done. That helped set the stage for a Hitler to come along after 20 years of decline. (Notice, that mistake was not repeated with Germany and Japan at the end of WW2.)
Or you could say WW2 was caused by the same incident that started WW1 - the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 - since the second war seemed to be in some cases a carry over of hostility left over from the first war.
I guess what I am saying - and I apologize for being a little long-winded - is that it is going to be hard to get a real appreciation and full understanding of our history (this country and the entire world) from one general book.
Hope this helps and I apologize if I got on my soapbox a little. History is one of those subjects I really got into in school and still do to this day.