Blood Diamonds

Rating:
Summary: A Compelling Narrative with Its Flaws
Review: Campbell writes compelling narrative with a fascinating array of characters - corrupt dictators, warlords, mercenaries, peacekeepers, child soldiers, missionaries, shady Middle Eastern merchants, diamond buyers, jewelers, diplomats, et al. - weaving in the tragedy that the pursuit of instant riches in the alluvial diamond fields of West Africa has wrought. The result is a modern morality tale about the scarce resources, globalization, and violence.

The book, however, is flawed by its author's failure to properly situate his narrative within the historical and political context of subregional conflict involving Liberia and Sierra Leone. The reader would thus do well to supplement this volume with a good political narrative like Pham's LIBERIA: PORTRAIT OF A FAILED STATE (Reed Press) or Ellis's MASK OF ANARCHY (New York University Press) in order to get a complete picture.

Rating:
Summary: Very good and informative
Review: Good book that will open your eyes to what is going on in the diamond buissness. Sad what the news in the United States DOSENT report.

Very easy to read with lots of background information and questions that one should ask themselves. I will never look at my wifes wedding rings the same. Its a shame jewels cause so much pain and murder.

Good book and hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I have always questioned the materialism of friends and family after years and years of seeing DeBeers on Tv, magazines, and newspapers senselessly pounding their marketing into my head. I've never been one to go along with the crowd, and I've met some Sierra Leonians and heard their stories of how they'd escaped. I quote this book whenever someone asks me about the jewelry I wear--the ever-present, "Oh, BUT YOU don't have any diamonds." I refuse to give up my political beliefs (enormously illustrated in this book, take a hint Family and Friends!) in order to wear a shiny piece of carbon. A diamond is forever? So is death, mutilation, bloodshed, and amputation. Mr. Campbell, you've done the entire Western world a great service by exposing all in this book. This is a pulverizing read, impossible to put down. You will never look at the words "engagement ring" and feel the same ever after reading this book.

Rating:
Summary: Just don't know about Amazon.com
Review: I haven't read the book yet but just got really upset reading this review page and had to post something. After spending an hour online reading all I could find about "blood diamonds," coming here, reading all the reviews about this book, and resolving to buy it and read it immediately, I scrolled down the page and found myself looking at Amazon's recommendation for another product I might like to buy: a 14k 1-carat 3-stone princess diamond wedding band for $1399.00, specifically, which was recommended by Amazon and their affiliates.

I recognize that these recommendations are probably randomly generated and that it was merely unfortunate luck that that product showed up on this page. However, it made me feel sick, after reading so much about the high human cost of diamonds and the inflated prices passed along to blind and willing consumers in this country. If Amazon is going to stock books that encourage people to think twice about what they're willing to spend their money on, then I think it would also be appropriate for them to be careful about what products they're recommending and whether there's a conflict of interest there.

I'm definitely buying this book, but I won't get it here. It just made me feel too sick to read all about the horrors of the diamond trade and then scroll down the page only to be exhorted to leave my conscience at the door and buy myself a big fat diamond.

Rating:
Summary: Diamonds are not a girl's best friend....
Review: I lived in Sierra Leone for quite a number of years and hence had the opportunity to experience what it was like to live sorrounded by poverty and diamonds (the Kono area). Unfortunately for me and my family, security reasons forced us to leave the country in the nineties.
Nowadays I live in Madrid, Spain. I'm a doctoral student and my research area is the diamond industry of Sierra Leone and its implications on the underdevelopment of Sierra Leone.
Mr. campbell's book has been very valuable to me because of the information it contains (for my disertation) and because it has sadly/happily brought me back to the country that I love most in the world.
Thank you Mr Campbell!
I strongly recommend the reading of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Not quite what I expected, but worth the read
Review: I read 'Blood Diamonds' in hopes of putting a more human face on the Sierra Leone conflict which is often covered from the perspective of governments fighting rebels with little room for the on-the-ground effects the conflict has had on the people of Sierra Leone.

To some extent Campbell has shown the effects of the conflict but in the same way that most other popular media has chosen; focus is on the amputees and baby-killing rebels. In otherwords, what will sell. Perhaps it was unwise to search for an anthropological perspective in a popular book such as this, but the trite recollections of amputation and murder that comprise the opening chapter and several other sections was disappointing.

On a positive note, Campbell provides a short and easy to comprehend history of the conflict that is useful for people unfamiliar with the events surrounding the RUF invasion of Sierra Leone and the resulting conflicts. Campbell also does a good job of demonstrating the complexity of the diamond export/import industry and the central role DeBeers has played (There are, however, more indepth books on the subject of DeBeers and the diamond industry).

Unfortunately, Campbell makes use of the sort of broad generalizations and stereotypes that so often rob popular media of its legitimacy in foreign affairs such as this. Lines such as "Any visit to an African village requires the blessing of the local chief" (5) are little more than western or eurocentric stereotypes that further alienate the African populations and their struggles from 'western' readers.

A book to be read carefully and cautiously if one is just becoming familiar with the diamond conflict in Sierra Leone.

Rating:
Summary: AUTHOR'S INAPTITUDE EVIDENT ON EVERY PAGE
Review: I'd anxiously awaited the arrival of this book, but after two weeks of trying to get through it, I simply couldn't... not because the subject matter was too real, but because its reality was obfuscated by the author's INCREDIBLY BAD writing. Don't believe me? I don't blame you. You've probably read the same charitable reviews that I have. But forget those reviews and read a sampling of Mr. Campbell's style: "In fact, the two men are Mutt-and-Jeff diamond smugglers: Singer has the connections and does the talking; Valdy is the money man."(pg.37)... I'm sorry. I didn't realize I'd just stepped into an old episode of Dragnet. Oh, but there's more. Check out this pathetic attempt at a simile: "We headed into the night, the sound of UN helicopters carried to us on the ocean breeze that moved the leaves overhead like bored hand-waving from a local parade." (pg.47)... Maybe I'm just lazy, but I don't enjoy having to edit the books I read in order to understand them. If you're similarly minded; I strongly suggest that if you want to learn anything about blood diamonds you look to some other source. The only positive thing I can say about Mr. Campbell's version is that it increased my sympathy for the exploited people about whom he writes. How unfortunate they are to have to rely on Mr. Campbell as an advocate.

Rating:
Summary: diamond marketing
Review: Thank you, reviewer Katie. I've just finished Teun Voeten's "How de Body," a narrative journalism account of the author's search for child soldiers in Sierra Leone. I clicked over to this recommended book and was as appalled to see the cross-marketing links for diamonds as you were. The discrepancy between which images are linked to diamonds for us by advertisers (soft-focus romantic couple, declarations of love, words like "exquisite" and slogans assuring you you're worth it for this once-in-a-lifetime symbol) and the history of atrocities, exploitation, and brutality in the diamond industry is here reinforced by Amazon, whose software is sure that if we're interested in diamonds, we must be fantasizing about owning one and in the mood to shop.

Ever since I saw a wonderful independent documentary (produced by National Geographic) on PBS in which a journalist visited the diamond mines, the lawless black market shantytowns, and the sanitized "conflict free" diamond registry in Freetown, I resolved to never buy or accept any diamond unless it was an heirloom. In the film, war amputees and ex-rebels work side by saide, day after day, in the mud and the open strip mines ripped in the landscape, to find perhaps a diamond a day that they will sell to a middleman for pennies. The journalist visited a deep basin in a river where an encampment of men lived, taking turns deep diving in zero visibility, connected to the surface for hours only by a plastic tube that is their only life support. They are looking for diamonds. Very dangerous. I came away from the film and book both with a sense that evil and corruption constellate around precious resources; that the atrocities committed around their control are the worst of human nature; and that even the most perfectly cut, polished, and set "conflict free" diamond partakes of human evil, something exacerbated by the disconnect of our marketing images from the stones' origin.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: The best parts of this book deal with the disjoint between the popular perception of diamonds as the ultimate symbol of love and romance, and the utter brutality that attends their production and distribution. It is an illusion that has been covered much more thoroughly and much better by Janine Roberts in "Glitter & Greed - The Secrete World of the Diamond Cartel." So I was not really looking for Campbell to give me futher exposition on the same matter. My impression, perhaps erroneous, was that Greg Campbell was drawn to Sierra Leone by the horrors of a lingering civil war. Having lived in Sierra Leone, I hoped that he as an outside observer, would at least suggest probable causes for the failure of the Sierra Leone state in particular, and of African nation states in general.

Boy, was I disappointed! Campbell regurgitates all the usual popular stereotypes, all of which are way of the mark in my opinion: Corruption; only a country in name, and so forth. Corruption is of course endemic in Sierra Leone. But after a few years in the country, one gradually realizes that corruption and other popular bogeymen are in fact consequences and not causes, of more fundamental dysfunctions. Campbell documents many of the savage MO of the RUF rebels, which is useful. But if you are an Africanist and a Sierra Leonephile as I am, chances are that you have followed the blow by blow march of despicable terror by a brutal band without a discernable agenda. In which case Campbell's narrative would not add much to what you already know.

I think it is very important that expatriate experts look beyond popular stereotype and contribute to an understanding of why Africa is so unstable and also to how the instability can be cured. How important is the legacy of highly centralized colonial governance models without checks and balances? Post independent African governments have adopted these same centralized structures. The result is that there is nothing to stop the free fall inspired by petty dictators in such a system. Blood Diamonds will entertain many. Unfortunately is missed an opportunity to contribute to a real understanding of the problems and to lasting solutions.

Rating:
Summary: The irony in diamonds
Review: Two years ago I read the Global Witness report "Conflict Diamonds" and watched the documentary "Cry Freetown". Both of these were quoted as sources by Greg Campbell in his book "Blood Diamonds". Two years ago I was so deeply shocked by what I read and saw that throught the foreign press I have been following the sitution in many African areas (Sierre Leone, Angola, Liberia, Democratic Republic of the Congo) affected by what are called "Conflict or Blood diamonds". In Sierre Leone, like many other African countires, the conflict was driven by greed and the wanting to control the diamond mines and wealth that these stones bring. Greg Campbell's book is what history is about. How these terrible conflicts devestate the lives of innocent people and devestate countries. As Campbell points out it is important to realise the consequences of these conflicts extend worldwide. It is ironic how a commodity societies view as so precious can produce something so hideous in the humam nature that at first it hurt to much to believe that it could possibly be true. But this is the truth that Glen Campbell recounts in his well researched and heartbreaking book "Blood Diamonds".