The Theater

Courage and Survival in the Defining Atrocity of the Ukraine War

In March of 2022, three weeks after invading Ukraine, Russian forces bombed the shelter housed in the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theater, in the city of Mariupol. The bombing stands, to this day, as the single worst act of mass civilian killing of the war. This book tells the story of the group of ordinary Ukrainians—workers, teachers, actors—who built that shelter, giving succor to thousands of their countrypeople, before it was destroyed. Their audacity and humor and humanity in the midst of the siege of Mariupol, against impossible odds, will leave readers inspired, amused, and devastated. Their story is the story of a young republic and its struggle to survive.

They Will Have to Die Now

Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate

In autumn 2016, Iraqi forces began operations to recapture Mosul from the Islamic State. Millennia-old, Mosul was a birthplace of Western culture but also infamous for its cruelty, from the Assyrians to Saddam Hussein. Through the eyes of soldiers and families and jihadis, award-winning reporter James Verini chronicles the combat that followed.

Among the most devastating urban conflicts since World War II, the battle for Mosul was both archaic and modern. Troops and jihadis fought house by house, block by block, matching bullet for bullet, while co-ordinating their movements on WhatsApp and uploading execution videos. Verini describes how this viciously contested patch of earth came to represent a war for the soul of a country, for its history and its future.