Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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

As a current student at GIA, this book gives a total different story about diamonds and the diamond industry. He's fair, honest and meticulous in his explanations. This book is funny, sad, scary and you feel as though you are on a journey with him through the many areas of the world where mining occurs. Makes you really think about other world industries when a little rock can be the difference of whether you live or die. Excellent read, awesome author.

The Heartless Stone: A Journey through the world of diamonds, deceit and desire
-- By Tom Zoellner



I've been discovering, or rediscovering, some of the best non-fiction around this year. By any standard, Tom Zoellner's "The Heartless Stone" is one of the best. A good writer, and Zoellner is one, can take a single topic....salt (` Salt: A World History" by Kurlansky or the spice trade ("Spice: The History of a Temptation" by Jack Turner) and weave a vivid, entertaining story around it.

Zoellner takes us to the impoverished nation (if one can call a collection of ragged children and corrupt officials a "nation") of The Central African Republic and travels to the diamond mines, watching his back for highwaymen and paying off corrupt officials as he goes .These are the "blood diamonds", extracted from the backs of slave labor and used to finance coups d'etats and revolutions. He takes us north to the Arctic Circle, where the discovery of diamond-bearing "Kimberlite" (the soil produced by volcanic eruptions) has fostered a huge investment by multi-national corporations to extract diamonds from the permafrost. His writing is intelligent and graceful...and at times philosophical.
He extracts nuggets of knowledge from those involved in the diamond trade, just as they extract diamonds from the earth. No substance known to man is more concentrated than the diamond. It is portable, easily concealed and sold on the black market. The Diamond's only value is what humans ascribe to it. It is a "Tabula Rasa" on which dreams are etched.

"A Diamond is a philosopher's stone of the existential variety," he writes.
For it is like the world itself, spoken into existence only through whatever meaning we choose to assign to it."

Zollner's quest for meaning begins when he buys a diamond for a girlfriend with whom he later breaks up. It is that quest that takes him to the far ends of the earth. He's probably better off with the new-found meaning, than with the girl.

I haven't even finished reading this book yet and I'm already feeling queasy about my own diamond ring, which incidentally I haven't worn in a few years due to an allergic reaction. When my husband and I bought it, it was definitely the most expensive thing either of us had ever shelled out money for, except our co-op apartment. Neither of us knew about the bloody history of the industry and the likelihood that the "forever" symbol of our love was so tainted. I'd like to sell it and donate the proceeds to charity. At least then it would do something good for somebody.

Here's a few questions you might ask your jeweler before buying a diamond ring. What's the diamond's history? Where was it mined? Was it swallowed and stolen by a mine worker? Was it taked from the bowels of a murdered mine worker? Did it finance a war? Was it grown in a machine? Was it cut by children in India? How many diamonds does De Beers hold in inventory to keep prices high?

A fascinating, well written expose of the diamond industry.

So, I liked Tom's brand-new book about uranium so much I decided to go read some things from his backlist, and The Heartless Stone - a book about diamonds and what the diamond trade has done to the world - was the first book I started with. All I can say about this book is that it is amazing. It's not often that a book can completely change the way you view an object you see everyday, like a diamond. I am not a fan of diamonds personally - and after reading this book I can safely say I never will own a diamond. Basically, those big, perfectly clear, perfectly white diamonds everyone loves come from more or less only one place: an impoverished, war-torn country in Africa where diamonds are sold to buy weapons to continue wars against unarmed civilians, or for a pittance of money totally unrelated to the final purchase price you pay in the jewelry store. The most striking moment in the book came, for me, when Tom writes that "the diamond on the finger of a bride dancing in a Minnesota country club might very well have been fished out of the eviscerated bowels of a miner in Angola." Although the diamond industry would like us to believe that the era of "conflict diamonds" is over, Tom explains that it is not, and there is no concrete way to ensure diamonds of a certain type (clear, large, flawless) have NOT come from a war-torn region of the world. There's also the issue of the racist, terroristic and monopolistic policies of the DeBeers corporation, which still controls a huge percentage of the world's supply of diamonds.

If you still want a diamond after you read this book, there are some alternatives to buying a DeBeers-controlled, African-mined diamond, according to Tom:
- Buy a "synthetic" or "lab-created" diamond. These have gotten better and better over the years and despite DeBeers' efforts to suppress the creation and marketing of lab diamonds, they are widely available. If you want an over-one-carat, colorless diamond free of inclusions, a synthetic diamond (Moissanite is one brand name) is your best bet.
- Buy a colored diamond. Colored diamonds are being mined in Australia, Canada and a few other places, and are not the spoils of war or the product of slave labor, in most cases. Smaller yellow diamonds, "champagne" diamonds and "cognac" diamonds are almost certainly from Australia and are conflict free, although environmental damage is being done to mine them.
- Buy from one of the online jewelers that DOES care about the origins of their stones and will certify to you that the diamonds are conflict-free. Brilliantearth.com is one of these jewelers.

However, I say buck the system and don't get a diamond. The diamond doesn't make you engaged, your commitment to your partner makes you engaged. You don't "need" a diamond just because you're getting married. That big beautiful diamond represents love to some; to me, they now represent concentrated human suffering, and the wholesale rape of the environment. It's all in how you look at it.

It would be great if more people read this book and understood the connection between their consumer choices for an object none of us needs, and how the degradation of human life and the environment gets perpetuated.

This book takes you through the entire life-cycle of a Diamond. We start from the geology and how they are created in the mantle of the earth and then pushed to the surface. Then we go to how they are extracted in the Diamond fields of Africa. A grim tale of the brutal military rule in the Central African Republic is also very interesting. Also later in the book we get an interesting chapter about the diamond fields of Canada. The Extreme conditions of both are astonishing. From there we go on a Journey to India to understand how diamonds are polished from rough stones into Gems. We also get a peek inside the De Beers Cartel showroom where many cut gems are purchased by the hundreds to thousands to jewelers.

This book does a great job of explaining why there is such an inflated artificial markup on diamonds. At the same time you almost feel as if you are getting the back story to a Bond Movie, and are just waiting for a villain to show up. The economics explained in this book are very thought provoking.

If you enjoyed the movie "Blood Diamond" this is an excellent follow up.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and learned a lot along the way.

the author walks us through his experience as he researches the diamond trade. its an interesting book packed with a lot of historic information on the small precious stones, from their origins deep in the earth, up to and including the blood trade, and even some information about its pricing by one of the largest companies in the world. Great easy read.