How to do an-SQL join AND get the latest date without a sub-select

Here is some discussion on a one to many join that needs the many side to return ONE row – the latest one. Also in this article are many links to the related items. It took about an hour to find solutions without a sub-select. Sub-selects are VERY popular – could this be because they are easier to understand and more logical? Many articles still claim that sub-selects are slower especially when there is no correlating field between the sub-select and the outer select statement.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2111384/sql-join-selecting-the-last-records-in-a-one-to-many-relationship