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

by Tom Zoellner

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312339690
• ISBN13: 9780312339692
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 293 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.7" x 9.7"

Customer Reviews

Perhaps it should titled Monopoly, Marketing, & Murder

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.

Stands out like well "a diamond in the rough"

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.

Excellent read

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 Diamond has No Heart

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

Researched exhaustively, written with verve

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.