Required Reading:

In her third book Voctoria Finlay has mined the historic literature for good stories; her debunking of the story of the curse of the Hope Diamond, for instance, is hilarious. She has also gone to the countries involved with each gem, and literally descended into the mines. She has funny stories, like being stalled in a taxi during an elephant parade in Sri Lanka (elephant parades are good for the sapphire business, as such a gem that has been worn on an elephant tusk is believed to have been blessed by Buddha himself). She has undergone no small amount of risk on these excursions. She skillfully interviewed sometimes reticent subjects; some from within the mines, others within the marketing, trading, and gem cutting fields. The historic and social results of our fascination for these useless rocks ("You can't eat them, you can't read them, you can't shelter under them ..." she quotes her Burmese taxi driver as saying) are on display here, as colorful and surprising as any of the gems themselves.