[@Error] Sounds good, this RP has lots of room.

Anyway, I happen to be a big student of the era's history. I wanted to know what my parents and grandparents experienced and dealt with and that led to digging back to the times before that as well. History is a rabbit hole that way; you tend to study things to better understand other things, and that's why I recommended books about the French experience in Indochina, which are in turn informed by the French experience in WWII which had a lot to do with how WWI ended and so forth.

But a lot of what we deal with even now in the US often has to do with a reaction to Vietnam, culturally and politically; it seemed like a minor war at first glance, but the huge influence it had on the United States is easy to take for granted, because it's right in front of our face, and that makes it hard to appreciate on the whole sometimes. Connecting the dots is what history is all about, identifying influences and how the influences evolve.

Edit: Then again, I imagine a French person could tell us how the Algerian War plays into their modern politics -- it's obscure to us but an ever-present influence to them.