Diamond: A Journey to the Heart of an Obsession - Hardcover

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A skilled writer and journalist, Matthew Hart is also an editor of the New York trade magazine Rapaport Diamond Report. His articles on diamonds have appeared in such publications as The Atlantic Monthly and The Financial Post. He has written for newspapers, television, and film. His books include three novels and two previous works of nonfiction, including the story of the greatest gold discovery in the western hemisphere. He lives in Toronto.

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No other gem holds the allure and mystery of the diamond. In this book, journalist and author Hart (Golden Giant, 1985) offers a brief history of this supreme gem and the industry surrounding it. Part science text, part business history, part biography, and part travelog, the book provides some fascinating glimpses into the world of diamonds but can appear disjointed. Hart writes about South Africa's long-lived De Beers cartel and the attempts to unseat it, the unscrupulous characters of the trade, and the many aspects of the business, from miners to retailers. Taken separately, the anecdotes are interesting, even engaging, but throughout the book, the reader is left feeling that there is more to the story. A significant portion of the work covers the recent diamond finds in Canada, which Kevin Krajick's Barren Lands: An Epic Search for Diamonds in the North American Arctic (W. H. Freeman, 2001) covers in greater detailed study. Recommended for large business and business history collections. (Index not seen.) Mike Miller, Dallas P.L.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Any book that details the diamond trade must contend with the brilliance of Stefan Kanfer's 1993 gem, The Last Empire. And Hart's book picks up roughly where Empire left off. When Hart (editor of the New York trade magazine Rapaport Diamond Report) traces the diamond frenzy that struck Canada in the 1990s, his writing is as polished and fiery as when Kanfer re-created the machinations of Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato, the Romulus and Remus of the South African diamond cartel. But when the two mine the same territory, Hart's book looks like indicator minerals in comparison: Hart is less successful when he depicts De Beers's origins, the creation of the company's monopoly, and Ernest Oppenheimer, who turned De Beers into a profitable company. Hart, however, has a good eye for intriguing figures in the industry, including a part-wolf sled dog named Thor who was suspected of espionage. In the end, the author expertly takes readers into theft-riven African mines, the back rooms of Brazilian dealers, the polishing rooms in both midtown Manhattan and India's slums, and the sorting rooms in London.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

*Starred Review* Hart's fascinating account of the glittering business of mining and marketing diamonds is also a story of avarice, theft, aesthetics, monopoly, and war. Hart takes readers to the Amazon Basin, Botswana, Namibia, and the Canadian Arctic, where diamonds are mined, and then explains the all-important marketing mechanisms of the De Beers cartel. Hart describes how the power of De Beers has been eroded by the rise of Bombay as a marketing center, but De Beers is still the biggest player and its story the backbone of this work. Named for Boer farmers on whose land the great South African diamond strike began in the 1870s, De Beers was the outcome of buccaneering imperial-capitalists who knew that an uncontrolled supply would lower prices and ruin business. And Hart, with colorful descriptions of people and places, relates how the De Beers cartel has, with various successes and failures along the way, attempted to control the discovery of new diamond fields. Warlords in Sierra Leone and Angola thrive on rough diamonds, and thieves prey on them. Pilferage, according to Hart, adds up to hundreds of millions per year. So the story of the diamond business is rife with history, price-fixing, prospecting, and warfare. A consistently entrancing account. Gilbert Taylor
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