Kurin has fashioned a well-written “biography” of a rock more interesting than most people.
A rich cultural history of the Hope diamond, neither the most precious nor the largest gem in the world, but arguably the most storied.
For a traveling exhibit marking the 150th anniversary of the Smithsonian, curators were free to choose from any of the 140 million items owned by the Institute except for three: the too fragile “Star-Spangled Banner” and Wright Brothers flyer, and the too-valuable Hope diamond. The gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier first acquired the large, rough-cut, heart-shaped blue stone in 17th-century Golconda, the center of India’s diamond trade. Sold to Louis XIV and re-cut and reshaped by the court jeweler, the gem became known as the French Blue. Stolen along with other Crown Jewels in the wake of the French Revolution, a cut-down version of the Blue later emerged in the possession of George IV of Great Britain. At the profligate King’s death, banking heir Henry Philip Hope purchased it. It was twice sold before the Cartier Brothers acquired the diamond in 1910, and, in an inspired piece of salesmanship, created the legend of the “cursed” Hope diamond. Just the thing for credulous and incredibly wealthy Washington socialites Ned and Evalyn McLean, the new owners who do indeed suffer some unusual ill fortune, thereby perpetuating the Cartier concocted fiction. Nearly 40 years later, Harry Winston bought the stone and donated it in 1958 to the Smithsonian. Kurin, an Institution director, meticulously traces the diamond’s provenance and weaves in fascinating stories about celebrated satellite figures—Marie Antoinette, Georges-Jacques Danton, the Duke of Brunswick, Napoleon, Queen Caroline of England, Wilkie Collins, Jackie Kennedy, Nancy Reagan—who were touched by or contributed to the jewel’s legend. The author also discusses the geological processes that create diamonds, the methods by which they’ve been mined, cleaved, cut, fashioned, weighed and rated, and their shifting cultural significance through the ages.
Kurin has fashioned a well-written “biography” of a rock more interesting than most people.Pub Date: May 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-087351-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Smithsonian/Collins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!
It should come as no surprise that the gifted author of The Sea Around Usand its successors can take another branch of science—that phase of biology indicated by the term ecology—and bring it so sharply into focus that any intelligent layman can understand what she is talking about.
Understand, yes, and shudder, for she has drawn a living portrait of what is happening to this balance nature has decreed in the science of life—and what man is doing (and has done) to destroy it and create a science of death. Death to our birds, to fish, to wild creatures of the woods—and, to a degree as yet undetermined, to man himself. World War II hastened the program by releasing lethal chemicals for destruction of insects that threatened man’s health and comfort, vegetation that needed quick disposal. The war against insects had been under way before, but the methods were relatively harmless to other than the insects under attack; the products non-chemical, sometimes even introduction of other insects, enemies of the ones under attack. But with chemicals—increasingly stronger, more potent, more varied, more dangerous—new chain reactions have set in. And ironically, the insects are winning the war, setting up immunities, and re-emerging, their natural enemies destroyed. The peril does not stop here. Waters, even to the underground water tables, are contaminated; soils are poisoned. The birds consume the poisons in their insect and earthworm diet; the cattle, in their fodder; the fish, in the waters and the food those waters provide. And humans? They drink the milk, eat the vegetables, the fish, the poultry. There is enough evidence to point to the far-reaching effects; but this is only the beginning,—in cancer, in liver disorders, in radiation perils…This is the horrifying story. It needed to be told—and by a scientist with a rare gift of communication and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Already the articles taken from the book for publication in The New Yorkerare being widely discussed. Book-of-the-Month distribution in October will spread the message yet more widely.
The book is not entirely negative; final chapters indicate roads of reversal, before it is too late!Pub Date: Sept. 27, 1962
ISBN: 061825305X
Page Count: 378
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1962
APPRECIATIONS
A quirky wonder of a book.
A Peabody Award–winning NPR science reporter chronicles the life of a turn-of-the-century scientist and how her quest led to significant revelations about the meaning of order, chaos, and her own existence.
Miller began doing research on David Starr Jordan (1851-1931) to understand how he had managed to carry on after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his work. A taxonomist who is credited with discovering “a full fifth of fish known to man in his day,” Jordan had amassed an unparalleled collection of ichthyological specimens. Gathering up all the fish he could save, Jordan sewed the nameplates that had been on the destroyed jars directly onto the fish. His perseverance intrigued the author, who also discusses the struggles she underwent after her affair with a woman ended a heterosexual relationship. Born into an upstate New York farm family, Jordan attended Cornell and then became an itinerant scholar and field researcher until he landed at Indiana University, where his first ichthyological collection was destroyed by lightning. In between this catastrophe and others involving family members’ deaths, he reconstructed his collection. Later, he was appointed as the founding president of Stanford, where he evolved into a Machiavellian figure who trampled on colleagues and sang the praises of eugenics. Miller concludes that Jordan displayed the characteristics of someone who relied on “positive illusions” to rebound from disaster and that his stand on eugenics came from a belief in “a divine hierarchy from bacteria to humans that point[ed]…toward better.” Considering recent research that negates biological hierarchies, the author then suggests that Jordan’s beloved taxonomic category—fish—does not exist. Part biography, part science report, and part meditation on how the chaos that caused Miller’s existential misery could also bring self-acceptance and a loving wife, this unique book is an ingenious celebration of diversity and the mysterious order that underlies all existence.
A quirky wonder of a book.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6027-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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