A century has passed since the end of “the war to end all wars.” Wishful thinking, to be sure, but it’s old hat. Yesterday’s news. Dead history. Or is it?

But if we were to ask John or Jane Doe to talk about how that war started, how it was fought (think “trench warfare”), how it ended, what it accomplished, or how many American soldiers died in battle, we’d likely discover that what was then a cataclysm on a cosmic scale is now all but forgotten or dismissed as irrelevant.

So yo...