Bergstein’s book is an informative, well-written, and entertaining window onto another way of life.
Bergstein (Women from the Ankle Down: The Story of Shoes and How They Define Us, 2012) provides a history of diamond mining and marketing that reveals the deadly world behind this magical stone.
Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) must get the credit and blame for cornering the modern-day market when diamonds were discovered in South Africa. After absorbing the Kimberley Mine, Rhodes dominated every aspect of the diamond industry, from mining to distribution to marketing. He bought up and bought out others, and when diamonds were found in Tanzania, Botswana, Lesotho and off the coast of Namibia, he controlled them, as well. His business plan was to control output and stockpile stones to ensure the rarity of the gems and raise prices. He had a complete monopoly by 1888, and his company became De Beers. Rhodes was the prime minister of the Cape Colony, founder of Rhodesia, and the author of the injustices of apartheid. In addition to this history, Bergstein has great fun exploring the customers for these diamonds, whether they were royalty, Hollywood stars, or rappers. Probably the most interesting part of the book deals with the jewelers and the crafters who knew their customers and invented new ways to adorn them. The great designers—Cartier, Tiffany, Harry Winston, and Bulgari—often took chances, and they paid off. De Beers’ best move came in 1938 when they hired N.W. Ayer & Son to advertise their product: the company came up with the idea of diamond engagement rings and the slogan “a diamond is forever.” De Beers couldn’t control the market forever, however, and soon the Japanese, the Australians, and the Canadians were nibbling away. Competition, the advent of synthetic and imitation diamonds, and the conflict (or blood) diamond crisis all play a part in this fascinating story, well told by the author.
Bergstein’s book is an informative, well-written, and entertaining window onto another way of life.Pub Date: June 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-232377-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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