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".
Rating:
Summary: A GEM OF A BOOK
Review: Want to buy a nice diamond for your loved one? Read this book and you will, hopefully, change your mind. What if your loved one could not wear a diamond because his/her hands been cut off by people in the diamond pipeline?
Did you know that the DeBeers Corporation (world's largest diamond company) is an illegal entity in the USA and that no more than four of their employees may be in the USA at the same time? Read this fascinating and disturbing book to learn how fortunes have been made mining and marketing diamonds to an unsuspecting public.
Congratulations to the author for shedding some light on the horrific abuses carried out in the name of "luxury goods."
Rating:
Summary: A winner!!
Review: Well written,Scary place,scary subject.Brave writer
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