It is, alas, easy to grow numb to daily accounts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a war that is now in its fifth year and has been superseded in the headlines by other calamities. This is why The Theater, by the superb war correspondent James Verini, is such a valuable and compelling book. He focuses on the bombing of a shelter inside the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theater in March 2022, early in the invasion but still notable for being the single worst act of civilian killing in the war so far. No one knows the true number, but the Associated Press reported the toll may have been as high as 600. What Verini does so brilliantly is to tell the story of the shelter through those who built it and those who survived the siege of Mariupol, highlighting the courage, resilience, sorrow, and dark humor of a people under physical and emotional siege.
The author describes himself as a financial writer and a comedian, and after reading this book you will dearly wish the world had more such dual-careerists. Gold is the eternal metal, used for ornamentation and investment for thousands of years, and the pursuit of it has led to migration (the gold rush of the 1800s), barbaric conditions in mines across the world, and movie plots (Goldfinger,and I dare you not to start humming the song now). Dominic Frisby offers a witty survey of gold’s role in history, and his erudition is both impressive and worn lightly. Warren Buffett famously has no use for gold as an investment, but even he might consider this entertaining book worth buying.
