If you want the cheapest you can get, and don't mind sharing a room with strangers, a hostel is probably your best bet: San Francisco hostels can be as inexpensive as 12 US dollars hostelworld.com/hostels/San-Francisco Las Vegas can be had for as little as 10 American dollars hostelworld.com/findabed.php?OrderBy=price.
Here is some low budget hotels in SF: nozio.com/en/North_America/United_States....
I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.