The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire [Hardcover]

Tom Zoellner (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312339690 | ISBN-13: 978-0312339692 | Publication Date: May 30, 2006 | Edition: First Edition

In 2000, Tom Zoellner purchased a diamond engagement ring and proposed. His girlfriend said, "yes" and then, suddenly, walked out of his life making Tom the owner of a used engagement ring.  Instead of hitting the self-help shelves of his local bookstore, he hit the road travelling to diamond mines in Africa, Canada, India, Brazil and Russia to discover the true worth of this shining gem.  He travelled to Japan to understand how diamonds were linked with engagements and delved into the history of our own American romance with the diamond ring. He gained entry to DeBeers, the London diamond merchants. He visited shopping mall jewellers with starry-eyed couples. Through all of his travels, he searched for an answer to the question "How has one stone created empires, ruined lives, inspired lust and emptied wallets throughout history?" A diamond version of Susan Orleans's The Orchid Thief, Tom Zoellner's The Heartless Stone is a journey  to the cold heart of the world's most unyielding gem.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. After his fiancée dumps him and he's left with a diamond ring to unload, Men's Health contributing editor Zoellner crisscrosses the globe unlocking the mystique of this glittering stone "that brings misery to millions of people across the world." Zoellner probes how "blood diamonds" are used to fund vicious civil wars in Africa; how De Beers, seeing new markets to exploit, linked diamonds to the ancient yuino ceremony in Japan and played on caste obsession in India; and how India is pushing Belgium and Israel out of the gem trade. The author is expert with vivid prose: Australia's Argyle deposit is "shaped a little like a human molar"; impoverished urchins in the diamond-smuggling haven of the Central African Republic get high on bread-and-shoe polish sandwiches; and a Brazilian miner finds a rich concentration of river diamonds but fritters away much of the loot on prostitutes and booze, and eventually is ruined by a dishonest money changer. Politically conscious consumers can now avoid African and Brazilian mines teeming with human rights abuses. Canada pulls $1.2 billion worth of rough diamonds out of the tundra every year while enforcing tough environmental laws, and a Florida company uses Siberian high-pressure chambers to create low-cost chemically perfect diamonds. This is a superior piece of reportage. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–Historically, the workings of the diamond industry, heavily controlled until recently by the De Beers cartel, have been filled with clandestine meetings and covert operations, and its mythos even pervades popular culture. Zoellner has traveled the globe learning about the remarkably large supply of diamonds both mined and manufactured for industrial cutting and the jewelry trade. In the countries where they are mined, they represent both auspicious wealth and abject poverty. The citizens have long been exploited by international corporate investors and bloodthirsty local warlords anxious to supply the public with a token of eternal love. Teens may be surprised to learn that the must have diamond engagement ring is the result of a brilliant 1930s De Beers marketing strategy, which sought to influence the thoughts, tastes, habits, and fashions of Middle America. Heavy promotion and forced scarcity continue to fuel our inclination for the gems. Readers will be alternately fascinated and reviled by this exposé, which is equally well suited to casual reading and research.–Brigeen Radoicich, Fresno County Office of Education, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (May 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312339690
• ISBN-13: 978-0312339692
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #832,008 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This book will make you laugh AND vomit at the same time, December 18, 2006

By 

J. Jessup - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire (Hardcover)

I purchased this book on Friday and sat in the parking lot of the book store reading it until I realized two hours had passed.

The authors engaging narrative and extraordinary depth in terms of reasearch for each topic he covers related to the diamond trade is remarkable and so addictive, the book is virtually impossible to put down...which is why I devoured it in one night.

The author relates his experiences in such a way that even though the subject matter is mostly horrifying, there were moments of such outrageous hypocrisy and incredulity that I found myself laughing at the some of the more benign incidents because if I didn't laugh there would be no recourse but to cry myself into a fetal position while hiding under the bed.


The revulsion began when the author related the children eating sandwiches made with shoe polish, the people in Africa whose limbs were amputated to keep them from voting, the miners who were evicerated because thugs dressed as police thought they had swallowed a diamond.

But the waves of nausea that were induced by those repulsive revelations were NOTHING compared to the uncontrollable wretched gagging created by the documented evidence of the greedy machinations perpetuated by the De Beers Diamond Cartel.

I never thought about diamonds the way the De Beers corporation seems to think I SHOULD think about them. As in I should hate myself if I don't have one.


The putrid aggressive marketing campaign related to diamonds was shocking to read about ESPECIALLY when the author relates how De Beers were able to change an entire culture just with a simple but aggressive marketing campaign. The chapter dealing with De Beers shoving diamonds down the throats of Japanese was appalling in the extreme. Especially the ad campaign suggesting men were worthless for not spending three months salary on a diamond for their woman. It was galling to hear about how the De Beers advertisers went into American schools to "educate" girls on why they needed a diamond??? It was breathtaking to finish the book and turn on the tv and see first hand the nature of venal advertising campaigns whose primary goal seems to be toward making people feel small and inadequate if they don't have an iPod, an xbox or in the case of this book...A diamond.

The author has a great line about how nefarious the diamond trade is because the advertising executives have effectively convinced the world to spend millions of dollars on what amounts to nothing more than rocks. And they are not even rare rocks. The reason they are "so hard to find" is because these cartels have a chokehold on the industry by hiding all of them in their underground vaults so they can keep the prices up.

This book was a gut wrenching eye opener especially the final chapter when the author interviews a couple who are in the process of "investing" in their first diamond.

He asks how they feel knowing that the diamond they were about to purchase might have passed through the gastric system of a murdered miner in Angola the man replies.

"why do I care, it doesn't affect me"

And THAT was the worst part of the book. It captured the real horror of the diamond trade. That being the abject apathy of western consumer culture where material ownership supercedes any sense of basic humanity.

This book was shocking, appalling, terrifying, depressing and left me feeling hopeless and sad. For such a visceral reaction I wanted to give it five stars but opted for four because of what was a GLARING and Crimminal omission.

I hope for the paperback edition the author and publishers will offer an epilogue with definitve information on what we can ALL do to affect a change in the industry so that children don't have to polish stones in India, so that voters can keep their arms and so that Americans will put the welfare of fellow human beings ABOVE owning a DAMN ROCK.

33 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Researched exhaustively, written with verve, June 7, 2006

By 

Aileen (Astoria, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire (Hardcover)

Tom Zoellner goes here there and everywhere to learn how diamonds get from out of the ground and onto your finger. His prose is sharp and his eye misses nothing. Zoellner has a deep, human respect for his subjects, be they in the boardroom or the bottom of a mine. His empathy makes the cold reality of the diamond trade all that much worse to know about.

I'll bet Zoellner has scared the diamond industry to death. No diamond for me after that read.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Diamond has No Heart, August 17, 2006

By 

Bohdan Kot (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire (Hardcover)

Everything you wanted to know about diamonds but wish you didn't (especially for the would-be diamond engagement ring shopper) is cogently reported in the expose, "The Heartless Stone" by former "San Francisco Chronicle" reporter, Tom Zoellner. The author's journey ignites when his fiancee returns his diamond engagement ring; he begins to muse more about the diamond's origin. Zoellner's zigzagging adventure traverses fourteen nations on six continents (South Africa, India, Siberia and Arctic Canada are some of the researcher's sites).

In a self-effacing manner the writing unearths the history of diamonds, most notably the past century where De Beers of South Africa has had a choke hold monopoly on the hardest mineral on earth (a 10 on the Mohs Scale). Besides the physical properties of diamonds (not rare in nature, but rare in the world), the reader will be treated to the marketing history of diamonds and its current campaign by De Beers to encourage women to buy right hand diamonds; "blood diamonds" of Africa; the child stone-polishers of India; the recent improvements of technology in the making of man-made diamonds; and the newly discovered diamond mines of Canada that are not held by De Beers and attractive to social consumers for their environmental protective infrastructures and for the fifth C of diamonds - "conflict-free."

"The Heartless Stone" is a dense travelogue full of didactic stories that are easily digested for the entertainment, historical and social value. Zoellner leaves no stone unturned in discussing the often mysterious business of diamonds. The writing is clear as a D-colored diamond and helps illuminate the story of a gem that has proved to be expensive, a must-have luxury item, bloody, corrupt, ruinous and numerous other adjectives fastened upon a rock that has clearly lost its heart.

Bohdan Kot