title: The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit, and Desire
author:  Tom Zoellner 
description: <i>Starred Review.</i> After his fiance dumps him and he's left with a diamond ring to unload, <i>Men's Health</i> 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 <i>yuino </i>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. <i>(June)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  To Jeannette, my beloved,
  
  
  without whose persistence, encouragement, patience,
  
  
  resistance to my resistance,
  
  
  and enduring love
  
  
  this book would never have been
  
  
  and
  
  
  To Nathalie, Alexander, and Nicholas,
  
  
  the lights of my life
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Certain things I remember exactly as they were. They are merely discolored a
  bit by time, like coins in the pocket of a forgotten suit … The myriad past,
  it enters us and disappears. Except that within it, somewhere, like diamonds,
  exist the fragments that refuse to be consumed. Sifting through, if one dares,
  and collecting them, one discovers the true design.
  
  
  —James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Contents
  
  
  [Title Page](../xhtml/title.html#tit)
  
  
  [Dedication](../xhtml/dedication.html#ded)
  
  
  [Epigraph](../xhtml/epigraph.html#epi)
  
  
  [Introduction by James Salter](../xhtml/intro.html#intro)
  
  
  [Foreword by Jeannet