The RSpec Book: Behaviour Driven Development with RSpec, Cucumber, and Friends . Focuses on BDD rather than TDD, but that's the whole point of RSpec and Cucumber. Not entirely specific to Rails, but has several chapters dedicated to it.
Well written and up to date (though still in beta).
Some of your questions are answered in different episodes of the Railscasts by Ryan Bates. Things like RSpec, Cucumber, factories instead of fixtures, Pickle, ...
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.