This book is not particularly interesting -- but zinc, along with other base metals and rare earth metals, are going to soar in value over the next decade, as part of the commodity bull in which we find ourselves -- as growth in China, India, Brazil..., and global demand for all types of emerging infrastructural development -- accelerates.
I have a special interest in zinc and in early stage zinc mines -- but the same could be said for nickel, manganese, iron, titanium, copper and others, though the fundamentals of each will differ... obviously.
(Be careful wrt to claims about lithium, however -- which will be subject to much media hype, b/c of the development of the electric car: http://www.worldlithium.com/An_Abundance_of_Lithium_1.html. Specifics of the lithium market are complex...)
The reason for zinc in particular is evident in the photos we took in Shanghai and Hangzhou:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/candlestick98765/sets/
Though the deeper reasons have also to do with supply issues. Zinc will be in deficit by 2011, just when global demand (taken in aggregate) will have fully healed from its current (and self-inflicted) wounds....