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Tom Zoellner is the author of eight nonfiction books, including Island on Fire: The Revolt that Ended Slavery in the British Empire, and works as a professor at Chapman University and Dartmouth College. His writing has appeared in the The Atlantic, Harper's, The American Scholar, The Oxford American, Time, Foreign Policy, Men's Health, Slate, Scientific American, Audubon, Sierra, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Texas Observer, Departures, The American Scholar, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. Tom is a fifth-generation Arizonan and a former staff writer for The Arizona Republic and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from The Lannan Foundation, the Corporation of Yaddo, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.
Tom Zoellner's website
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Q: Why are diamonds such a big deal in America?
A: It’s now a $25 billion dollar business. Seven out of every
ten American women own at least one. But as it turns out, the idea of a diamond
as a popular luxury item is fairly new in this country. A magazine advertising
campaign sponsored by De Beers created the consumer desire just a few years
before World War II. They sought to make diamonds not just rare, but
essential for every man seeking to get married. Famous painters such as
Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali were commissioned to create landscapes next to
advertising text that had a strange fixation on death, of all things. But De
Beers tried to plant this subtle idea that diamonds are a kind of shield against
mortality. "Diamonds are the most imperishable record a man may leave of his
personal life," said one of the ads. That’s part of the source for the famous
slogan they eventually cooked up in 1948: "A Diamond Is Forever." A phony
"tradition" was also established: a groom must spend two months’ salary on his
wife’s stone. But this was not a global standard. British men were viewed as
more stingy and were told to save one month’s pay. The...
Dr. Ross Donaldson is the Director of the Emergency Medicine Global Health Program at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and holds appointments in the UCLA Schools of Medicine and Public Health. He is the critically acclaimed ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Heartless Stone
Try:
The Lassa Ward
by Dr. Ross Donaldson MD, MPH
Richard Fortey is a senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London. His books include the critically acclaimed Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, short-listed for the Rh&#... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Heartless Stone
Try:
Dry Storeroom No. 1
by Richard Fortey
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