Growing up, I've always had a passion for history. This was inspired by games such as Caesar, Civilization, Age of Empires, Dynasty Warriors, and Pirates. This led me to educate myself on military and geopolitical history. While this makes for interesting conversation, and understanding of foreign policy, and some insights into the nature of leadership and group loyalty, it has become increasingly obvious that it is less useful for understanding humans and organizations and their day-to-day conflicts and pathologies. It is far too high-level and besides, most interactions do not happen under the stresses of anarchy found on the campaign field or international stage. Can anyone recommend any histories that they have found that go into detail about the history of more mundane sorts of events we are likely to find in our lives?

I'll start: Therac-25: A history of a deadly medical device design error and the organizational failure that accompanied it http://sunnyday.mit.edu/papers/therac.pdf