Another nice choice would be ekmett's new intern package, which handles bytestrings as well as more complex recursive types: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/intern.
I wrote monad-atom for my own use. It's not what you want if you need globally unique atoms, but if all you need is a string table it is simple and safe.
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.