“In the end, "The Heartless Stone" does not merely -- or thoroughly -- demystify diamonds. Instead, it leaves the reader poised before a kind of literary store window. It's dusk. Yellow light spills out onto the sidewalk…”. Blah, blah, blah.

I guess writing a book is ultimately cheaper than therapy. However, I worry a bit for someone who exercises the demons of unrequited love by writing a whole tome on the only thing he has left over from the relationship. I have one word for you Tom: pawnshop!

As for the above excerpt from Ben Cosgrove’s article, If the author in question didn’t “thoroughly -- demystify” the diamond, then he did a piss poor job of writing a book about them. The prospective consumer only needs to know a few things about diamonds to make an ’unmystified’ decision whether to ever buy one:

1) They are fairly worthless. They are expensive for the simple reason that a monopoly controls the bulk of the diamond trade and creates an allusion of scarcity by controlling how many diamonds go onto the market at any one time. If you were to flood the market tomorrow with the glut of diamonds currently held in vaults in Antwerp, Moscow, New York, India and Rio, you wouldn’t even be able to fill the tank of your SUV with the proceeds of your 1-karat stone.

2) Many diamonds come from places where the profits made from them are used to finance wars and genocide. The diamond panjandrums will tell you that they don’t sell these ‘blood’ diamonds but they really don’t know which is which-- despite their propaganda. It’s about as easy to buy blood diamonds through legitimate channels as it is to get tainted oysters from greasy spoon diners.

3) Diamonds are not eternal, forever or a girls best friend. You can burn a diamond or easily crush them with a hammer. And girls need a diamond about as much as they need a whole in their head. These are just clever slogans invented to convince you that your love is not complete without first ponying up to the whores at DeBeers.

Anyone who buys a diamond is either a rank sentimentalist or a dupe in a fairly transparent game. In a country that has a record level of personal dept and an unheard of ‘zero’ savings level, I can’t think of a more egregiously asinine expense for a young couple about to get married. Before buying a diamond do yourself a big favor and educate yourself before giving your money to the obscene hucksters at the DeBeers Corporation.

I would like to recommend an outstanding article on the history of the marketing and business of diamonds.

It's really worth a read, IMO - it got me interested in the whole type of Atlantic Monthly article years ago.

(And Salon carries on the tradition).

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/198202/diamond

Of course they aren't. The sun isn't forever!

Chad, you said it quite well. Bullshit book, sementality mixed with a few facts about diamonds.

I didn't pass, but you, dear reader, should.

My engagement ring is sapphire, and one of the most beautiful I've ever seen is peridot.

There's a book-length version of the Atlantic article Craig234 mentions at http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/prologue.htm.

Great fun, but it should be noted the Atlantic article predicts a collapse of the diamond market in the 1980s. Still some sparkle in those rocks for those who want them.

If you actually look at the phase diagram for carbon, you will see that its diamond allotrope (allotrope just means different atomic packing in the crystal) is stable only at very high pressure and temperature, which are the conditions under which they form.

At atmospheric pressure, diamonds are slowly converting back to graphite. So in "forever" your diamond ring will consist of graphite mounted in gold/silver/platinum.

I spent a lot of time waiting for the meat of this article to come to the fore. I mean, is it a memoir, or an exploration of the diamond in popular culture, an expose, a mish mash of all the above. I got no real sense what this book is about, what the themes are about, and the citations included were really fragments of single sentences. I think the writer got so caught up in their own responses to the book that they forgot to give us a breakdown of what the book is really about.

DeBeers has made their money controlling supply and promoting the diamond ring as a precious symbol of commitment, but a few years ago they started marketing the "right hand ring" to women as some symbol of empowerment. Silly -- but I wonder how many have fallen for it, and if this shift in strategy is paying off for DeBeers. They've certainly spent enough money on advertising and celebrity endorsements (read "free bling").

I agree with Craig here -- it's all a lot of bullshit promoted by the DeBeers cartel and diamonds themselves are common and nearly worthless. But no ad campaign is powerful enough to create the pure hunger than women have for diamond engagement rings -- it can't be just the stone itself, because the same fanatical desire does not exist for diamond earrings, or bracelets. An engagement ring is more than that -- it symbolizes a man's desire for a woman, in boldly financial terms (how big a stone can he afford? how much $$$ will he pony up to make her look good?).

Women are keen observers of engagement rings, and judge other women by them. I am not remotely surprised that the gentleman in the article dove into a garbage truck to retrieve his wife's ring! I imagine he would have happily dove into a tank of hungry sharks rather than face her wrath at losing a 3.5 carat ring, LOL!

When I was married the first time, we were poor as church mice and a diamond ring was not even discussed -- it simply wasn't possible. I also bit my nails back then, and had no reason to want to call attention to short raggedy nails. But when I remarried, I had quit biting and of course, wanted to everyting differently, so I decided I did want a ring. First off, one thing that a large sparkly stone does is draw a lot of attention to a pretty hand. But again, not much money so I decided to have my grandmother's diamond reset in a modern setting. Still and all, I got a lot of flack ("a USED stone?") and lots of comments from women friends about how I was not making my fiance pay enough money. (One woman told me: "I made sure my husband KNEW that I was gonna cost him a 2 carat stone -- and that I was worth it.")

After 12 years of marriage, I am often surprised how much women compare rings and comment on those that are not big or flashy. It makes me sorry that I ever particpated in this. At the very least, I didn't buy a blood diamond or support the DeBeers cartel. But it's still this weird competitive thing amongst women, and very unpleasant....I often think some women equate an engagement ring with the value of a marriage, when it's nothing more than jewelry!