In March of 2022, the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was bombed by Russian forces, the worst act of mass civilian killing in the still ongoing conflict. This brief book tells the story of a select number of survivors out of the many hundreds who had been driven from their homes to seek shelter there and were killed in an instant. It is a story of the ordinary men and women of the young country—theater workers, factory workers, actors, teachers—many of whom dismissed Putin’s saber-rattling and were subsequently shocked by the onslaught and brutality of the invasion. Through their stories, we get deeply invested in their struggle for survival and their larger hopes and dreams for a better life in a land still deeply tied to past traumas. The mordant humor, pluck, and humanity of so many of these characters makes for inspiring reading amidst the reality of a bleak and tragic war. There is no better way to learn the history of the region, the larger forces and personalities that led to the conflict, and what is ultimately at stake in this most consequential European war since WWII, than this book.

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.