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
A leisurely, folksy account of Serengeti days spent communing with horned ungulates. During the mid-1960s and early 1970s—while teaching at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and then at Texas A&M—Walther spent a goodly amount of time in the Serengeti National Park in East Africa doing fieldwork in the then-new science of ethology (species-specific behavior in animals), studying gazelles in particular. This short volume is the fruit of those African experiences, written at a distance of 25 years. It's the kind of monograph Sherlock Holmes would approve for its wealth of fact and observation, yet it also makes comfortable fireside reading, with its reminiscences of a tourist-free savannah and its fogyish humor. Much of the book is given over to recording the daily life of gazelles: their territorial marking walks, grazings, snoozes in the sun, flirtations, copulations, clashes with neighboring bucks, more grazings and markings, another catnap—life in the slow lane. Walther unleashes a bit of hard science when he discusses mating rituals and flight distances, alpha male roles and mass migration patterns. With obvious pleasure, he cuts the mighty simba down a notch. ``I can unreservedly agree with only one of the laudatory tributes,'' he writes. ``The lion is yellow—more or less.'' Walther was a field man of the old school: He made his own maps; kept long, hard hours; fended, alone, for himself; and was not afraid of some modest anthropomorphism. (He still isn't, referring in the text to the gazelles as ``my people'' and giving them names.) The book's only lack is a glossary; it's hard to keep straight whether a dik-dik prefers sotting within sight of a mbuga...or maybe it was a kopje. Wonderfully rich and detailed, filled with vignettes, a lovely blend of science and memoir. (41 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-253-36325-X
Page Count: 140
Publisher: Indiana Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Who says that wolves show no compassion, that ants are clueless when it comes to rage, that crows don't enjoy a good wheeze—in short, that animals other than humans don't have emotions—demands Masson (My Father's Guru, 1992, etc.) in this entertaining, if undefinitive, collection of soulful animal tales. Who? Well, just about everybody who thinks the scientific method is the last word, or likes to adorn him/herself in furs, or feels the need to dominate—that's who. Controversial psychoanalyst Masson (and coauthor McCarthy, a science writer) doesn't buy their hot air for a moment: The jury's still out on this question, he says, and anybody who claims the last word is full of hokum. Turning from his study of the human psyche to the psyche of animals, Masson comes up with scores of episodes where animals appear to have displayed—through gesture, act, posture, or sound- -an emotional vocabulary, and a wide one at that. The greater part of this book is given over to examples of beastly sensibilities: the tender, protective, and tolerant love of many creatures for their children (``to let them chew on you...snatch your dinner...put up with their noise...you had better love them deeply''); mourning for a lost mate, evidenced by the likes of cows and dolphins; the melancholy of a subdued, whimpering, tearful chimp; the compassion of an elephant trying to aid a mired baby rhino, despite repeated rushes from the rhino's mother. And there are a hundred more examples. In the final instance, Masson admits that these anecdotes are no more proof of animals' emotional life than are those given to deny such emotions—neither rests on the hard bed of fact. But, he argues, aren't they enough to make us reconsider our lab-testing programs or the impulse to be draped in sable? Can a bear appreciate beauty? Maybe, maybe not, says Masson. But when he hears of one apparently meditating on a colorful sunset, he's ready to give the brute the benefit of the doubt. (First serial to Cosmopolitan and New Age Journal; Book-of-the- Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selections; author tour)
Pub Date: May 12, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-31425-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
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