Precious Objects
Precious Objects

Author: Alicia Oltuski

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-07-19

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 143917170X

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In the middle of New York City lies a neighborhood where all secrets are valuable, all assets are liquid, and all deals are sealed with a blessing rather than a contract. Welcome to the diamond district. Ninety percent of all diamonds that enter America pass through these few blocks, but the inner workings of this mysterious world are known only to the people who inhabit it. In Precious Objects, twenty-six-year-old journalist Alicia Oltuski, the daughter and granddaughter of diamond dealers, seamlessly blends family narrative with literary reportage to reveal the fascinating secrets of the diamond industry and its madcap characters: an Elvis-impersonating dealer, a duo of diamond-detective brothers, and her own eccentric father. With insight and drama, Oltuski limns her family’s diamond-paved move from communist Siberia to a displaced persons camp in post–World War II Germany to New York’s diamond district, exploring the connections among Jews and the industry, the gem and its lore, and the exotic citizens of this secluded world. Entertaining and illuminating, Precious Objects offers an insider’s look at the history, business, and society behind one of the world’s most coveted natural resources, providing an unforgettable backstage pass to an extraordinary and timeless show.

In the Company of Diamonds
In the Company of Diamonds

Author: Peter Carstens

Publisher:

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13:

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After the 1925 discovery of diamonds in the semi-desert of the northwest coast of South Africa, De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd. virtually proclaimed its dominion over the whole region. In the town of Kleinzee, the company owns all the real estate and infrastructure, and controls and administers both the town and the industry. Peter Carstens's In the Company of Diamonds draws a stark and startling portrait of this closed community, one that analyzes the power and hegemonic techniques used to acquire that power and maintain it. As a prototypical company town, Kleinzee is subordinated to the industry and will of the owners. Employees and workers are variously differentiated and ordered according to occupation, ethnic variation, and other social criteria, a pattern reflected most markedly in the allocation of housing. Managers live in large, ranch-style houses, while contract workers are lodged in single-sex compounds. As a community type, company towns like Kleinzee are not entirely unique, and Professor Carstens successfully draws a number of structural parallels with other closed and incomplete social formations such as Indian reservations, military bases, colleges, prisons, and mental hospitals.

Diamonds and Scoundrels
Diamonds and Scoundrels

Author: Adrienne Rubin

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-09-17

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 163152514X

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When Adrienne Rubin enters into the jewelry business in 1970s Los Angeles, she is a maverick in a world dominated by men. She soon meets a young hotshot salesman who doesn’t seem to struggle at all, and when he asks her to be his partner, she is excited to join him. She doesn’t know him well, but she does know his father, and she believes he is as trustworthy as the day is long . . . Diamonds and Scoundrels shows us how a woman in a man’s world, with tenacity and sheer determination, can earn respect and obtain a true sense of accomplishment. Following Rubin’s experiences in the jewelry industry through the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s—with the ups and downs, good guys and bad—this is a tale of personal growth, of how to overcome challenges with courage and resilience. It’s a story for the woman today who, in addition to a rich family life, seeks a self-realized, fulfilling path toward a life well lived.

Diamonds
Diamonds

Author: Jack Ogden

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 403

ISBN-13: 0300235518

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A lavishly illustrated, in-depth early history covering two thousand years of diamond jewelry and commerce, from the Indian mines to European merchants, courts, and workshops This richly illustrated history of diamonds illuminates myriad facets of the “king of gems,” including a cast of larger-than-life characters such as Alexander the Great, the Mughal emperor Jahangir, and East India Company adventurers. It’s an in-depth study tracing the story of diamonds from their early mining and trade more than two thousand years ago to the 1700s, when Brazil displaced India as the world’s primary diamond supplier. Jack Ogden, a historian and gemologist specializing in ancient gems and jewelry, describes the early history of diamond jewelry, the development of diamond cutting, and how diamonds were assessed and valued. The book includes more than one hundred captivating images, from close-up full-color photographs of historic diamond-set jewelry (some previously unpublished), to photomicrographs of individual gems and illustrations of medieval manuscripts, as well as diagrams depicting historical methods of cutting and polishing diamonds.

Blood, Sweat and Earth
Blood, Sweat and Earth

Author: Tijl Vanneste

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2021-12-21

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1789144353

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A sweeping history of our enduring passion for diamonds—and the exploitative industry that fuels it. Blood, Sweat and Earth is a hard-hitting historical exposé of the diamond industry, focusing on the exploitation of workers and the environment, the monopolization of uncut diamonds, and how little this has changed over time. It describes the use of forced labor and political oppression by Indian sultans, Portuguese colonizers in Brazil, and Western industrialists in many parts of Africa—as well as the hoarding of diamonds to maintain high prices, from the English East India Company to De Beers. While recent discoveries of diamond deposits in Siberia, Canada, and Australia have brought an end to monopolization, the book shows that advances in the production of synthetic diamonds have not yet been able to eradicate the exploitation caused by the world’s unquenchable thirst for sparkle.

The Last Empire
The Last Empire

Author: Stefan Kanfer

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 1995-04-30

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 0374524262

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"Timely corporate history--as exciting and poignant as any good tale of derring-do against great odds by all-too-flawed giants. " - Kirkus Reviews With a scholar's precision and a novelist's eye, Stefan Kanfer tells the inside story of De Beers Consolidated Mines - from the nineteenth century diamond rush that transformed Johannes De Beer's humble South African farm into an exotic klondike, to the Oppenheimers' shadow empire that has achieved umatched global reach.

The Diamond Hunters
The Diamond Hunters

Author: Wilbur Smith

Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction Ltd.

Published: 2018-01-01

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1785765914

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An action-packed thriller of family, business and betrayal - perfect for fans of Succession - by global sensation Wilbur Smith. 'A master storyteller' - Sunday Times 'Wilbur Smith is one of those benchmarks against whom others are compared' - The Times 'No one does adventure quite like Smith' - Daily Mirror Some people will never have enough . . . Johnny Lance was taken in by the Van Der Byls when he was an orphaned boy, and his life has been dedicated to making his adoptive father proud. But his efforts have been in vain, his father loathes him and, in his dying breath, makes one final demand of his biological son, the jealous and vengeful Benedict: to destroy his half-brother. When Johnny is tricked by Benedict into losing his entire fortune to the Van Der Byls company, he becomes a laughingstock. Benedict's sister, the smart and beautiful Tracey, loves Johnny and buys him a concession in the diamond rich seabeds of the South-West African Coast. But the obsessive Benedict has been shaped at his father's hand and will do anything to finish what he started. Even if it means destroying everything . . .

Blood Diamonds
Blood Diamonds

Author: Greg Campbell

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2012-04-03

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0465029922

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First discovered in 1930, the diamonds of Sierra Leone have funded one of the most savage rebel campaigns in modern history. These "blood diamonds" are smuggled out of West Africa and sold to legitimate diamond merchants in London, Antwerp, and New York, often with the complicity of the international diamond industry. Eventually, these very diamonds find their way into the rings and necklaces of brides and spouses the world over. Blood Diamonds is the gripping tale of how the diamond smuggling works, how the rebel war has effectively destroyed Sierra Leone and its people, and how the policies of the diamond industry - institutionalized in the 1880s by the De Beers cartel - have allowed it to happen. Award-winning journalist Greg Campbell traces the deadly trail of these diamonds, many of which are brought to the world market by fanatical enemies. These repercussions of diamond smuggling are felt far beyond the borders of the poor and war-ridden country of Sierra Leone, and the consequences of overlooking this African tragedy are both shockingly deadly and unquestionably global. Updated with a new epilogue.