San Antonio College Library

When he proposed to his girlfriend, Tom Zoellner gave what every American man is supposed to give at such a time, a diamond engagement ring. But when the relationship broke apart a few months before the wedding, he was left with a used diamond ring that began to haunt him. Zoellner looked harder at the stone, and the consequent fascination sent him around the world. Across fourteen nations and six continents, the empty mythology of the diamond drew...

"Diamonds brings together for the first time all aspects of the diamond industry. In it, Ian Smillie, former UN Security Council investigator and leading figure in the blood diamonds campaign, offers a comprehensive analysis of the history and structure of today's diamond trade, the struggle for effective regulation, and the challenges ahead. There is, he argues, greater diversification and competition than ever before, but, thanks to changed attitudes...

"Spanning centuries of ground-breaking science, bitter rivalry, outright fraud, and self-delusion, The Diamond Makers is a narrative centered around the brilliant, often eccentric, and controversial pioneers of high-pressure research. This blend of dramatic personal stories and extraordinary scientific advances - and devastating failures - brings alive the quest to create diamond. Scientists have harnessed crushing pressures and scorching temperatures...

"Africa supplies the majority of the world's diamonds, yet consumers generally know little about the origins and history of these precious stones beyond sensationalized media accounts of so-called blood diamonds. Stones of Contention explores the major developments in the remarkable history of Africa's diamonds, from the first stirrings of international interest in the continent's mineral wealth in the first millennium A.D. to the present day. In...

Journey with us to the heart of the diamond mining industry. We'll profile the powerful machines of the Ekati diamond mine, and the fearless, hardworking people who operate them for the prize of extracting precious stones. At the Argyle Diamond Mine in Western Australia, success depends on brute force and speed. Here the rotary blasthole drill - half a million pounds of raw ripping power - races against the clock to pound holes 280 feet into the Earth,...

Thirteen years after a vicious civil war forced him to flee his childhood home of Sierra Leone, director Raouf J. Jacob's returns to find meaning in a place once forsaken by the rest of the world. Travelling across the country, he explores the sensitive environmental, social and cultural issues that, even today, remain taboo. He searches for the lost boys, former child soldiers living in the shadows, to see how successful attempts to reintegrate them...