I found a pretty great laptop for you. It can even run Skyrim on low settings. Counter Strike on High settings with 100+ FPS (Runs great pretty much) http://www.bestbuy.com/site/HP+-+15.6%22... I found a site to show how good it plays games.
Scroll down to Game Benchmarks. If you see anything that's 30 or more FPS, That means it's playable http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-... Great computer and processor, enjoy! (Oh, and Macs suck, wayyyy too over priced and it can't run games well.).
I would suggest you Toshiba Qosmio X775-Q7380 17.3-Inch Gaming Laptop Intel Core i5 Processor 2.4GHz (3MB Cache) 6GB SDRAM RAM 640GB 5400RPM Hard Drive 17.3-Inch Screen, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560M.
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.