The Commits area's "Recent" view mode was designed to give you a quick overview of the most recent activity in your repository.
By default, the last 10 commits are automatically loaded. You can configure this amount in Tower's preferences dialog.
In addition to the basic information you can choose if you want to see which files were changed in a commit. Either click the disclosure triangle near the bottom border of the commit item you want to inspect or check the "Show Files" checkbox at the top to see files for all currently displayed commits. To see a diff of the changes in a certain file just click it in the list.
To see more details about a commit, select "Show Commit Details in New Window..." from the contextual menu (by clicking the gear icon at the bottom right corner).
NOTE:The images for authors / committers are loaded from gravatar.com (accounts are free). If the email address under which the commit was made matches an account email at gravatar.com the corresponding image is shown.