The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton Volume 30: The Illustrated London News 1914-1916 by G.K. Chesterton

This opens much like the prior ones. Essays about the usefulness of books for education, because unlike an excellent schoolmaster, a book can be reproduced, and talk from history, about a pope, and some other topics.

Then, of course, WWI. The transition to war is interesting because, of course, he didn't have to explain the current events. (You get that sort of jar in all sorts of collections of incidental writings, from complete ignorance to assuming knowledge; it's interesting.) And thereafter war is the topic of the essays. The effect of regulations on alcohol on soldiers (he tried to help them evade one by ordering the drinks they had tried to); conscription; a claimed massacre of Romanian soldiers by Germans -- claimed by the Germans who didn't' want to admit that most got away instead of being captured (though their captures of guns indicated they were lying); German atrocities, on which he certainly gives the British mood; insisting that Germany can not be permitted to keep what it conquered to make peace, and more.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703346.Ancient_Inventions

This book was a ton of fun to read. I'll start out with a proviso that sometimes their analysis of ancient technology isn't very accurate. But they managed to collect a huge pile of interesting, entertaining history. I didn't know that people were firing glazed pottery 7000 years ago, for instance. In some places, what they talk about raises more questions than it answers. (Until the 1860's, when Lister started cleaning wounds with carbolic acid, a compound fracture of a limb almost always meant either amputation or death from infection, but we've recovered Stone Age skulls that show fully recovered bone growth from multiple holes drilled through them. They knew something about wound cleanliness, apparently, but we don't know what.)
The sexuality section contains some material that would make me think twice about giving it to a friend's pre-teen kid who is really interested in history.
I appreciated the breadth of some of their discussions: they have drawings detailing how Greek theater robots and automatic doors worked, for instance, where other sources usually just mention that Hellenic Greece had interesting automata.
Rating: Four medieval compass-making factories out of five!