{"product_id":"jewels-isbn-9780345466952","title":"Jewels","description":"Throughout history, precious stones have inspired passions and poetry, quests and curses, sacred writings and unsacred actions. In this scintillating book, journalist Victoria Finlay embarks on her own globe-circling search for the real stories behind some of the gems we prize most. Blending adventure travel, geology, exciting new research, and her own irresistible charm, Finlay has fashioned a treasure hunt for some of the most valuable, glamorous, and mysterious substances on earth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith the same intense curiosity and narrative flair she displayed in her widely-praised book Color, Finlay journeys from the underground opal churches of outback Australia to the once pearl-rich rivers of Scotland; from the peridot mines on an Apache reservation in Arizona to the remote ruby mines in the mountains of northern Burma. She risks confronting scorpions to crawl through Cleopatra’s long-deserted emerald mines, tries her hand at gem cutting in the dusty Sri Lankan city where Marco Polo bartered for sapphires, and investigates a rumor that fifty years ago most of the world’s amber was mined by prisoners in a Soviet gulag.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJewels is a unique and often exhilarating voyage through history, across cultures, deep into the earth’s mantle, and up to the glittering heights of fame, power, and wealth. From the fabled curse of the Hope Diamond, to the disturbing truths about how pearls are cultured, to the peasants who were once executed for carrying amber to the centuries-old quest by magicians and scientists to make a perfect diamond, Jewels tells dazzling stories with a wonderment and brilliance truly worthy of its subjects.Praise for Victoria Finlay’s Color\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The writing elegant and precise, and with at least one new and fascinating revelation on every single page . . . I could not be more enthusiastic.”\u003cbr\u003e–Simon Winchester, author of A Crack in the Edge of the World\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Color is the essence of landscape, of mood, of our whole perception of the physical world. Victoria Finlay has traveled through Iran, Afghanistan, and other places to investigate the origin of all those tantalizingly sensual ochers and reds and blues. What a creative idea for a book!”\u003cbr\u003e–Robert D. Kaplan, author of Imperial Grunts\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In this engaging travelogue, a rainbow of hues determined the author’s choice of destinations. . . . By the time you read ‘Violet,’ you will have traversed much of the world, sharing Finlay’s contagious fascination with color.”\u003cbr\u003e–Condé Nast Traveler\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A rainbow of stories . . . even casual natural history fans can enjoy Finlay’s conversational style and her enthusiasm.”\u003cbr\u003e–Chicago TribuneVictoria Finlay studied social anthropology at the University of St. Andrews and the College of William \u0026amp; Mary, Virginia, before working for Reuters in London and Scandinavia. She spent twelve years as a journalist in Hong Kong, five of them as arts editor of The South China Morning Post, where she also presented a weekly radio program. She now lives in Somerset in southwest England, and divides her time between researching her next book and working for an international environmental charity, www.arcworld.org. Jewels is her third book.1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Amber\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"In the sea of the changeable winds, his merchants fished for pearls.   In the sea where the North Star culminates, they fished for yellow   amber.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    -Inscription on an obelisk erected by a king of Nineveh\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"If the insect could speak it would certainly have modified all the   knowledge about the history of the distant past.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    -Immanuel Kant, on seeing a fly trapped in amber.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In the ancient Cheddar Gorge of Somerset in England, there is a huge   cavern. Since it was first discovered more than a century ago it has   yielded many rare artifacts and bones from the ancient past, including   even a complete seated skeleton, nine thousand years old. But in 1950   this place, named \"Gough's Cave\" after the Victorian sea captain who   found it, also yielded what is perhaps the oldest piece of traded   gem-type material ever discovered. It is dark red and rather dirty,   like a scuffed piece of translucent toffee, and it is almost the size   of a dozen credit cards stacked together.It is a piece of amber and   it was traded at least 12,500 years ago. It looks an unlikely treasure,   but treasure it is because it is possibly the first indication we have   today of a human fascination with amber that has lasted since   prehistoric times.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    At the time of its discovery there was no way to ascertain where the   amber in Gough's Cave had come from-whether from Britain (some rare   pieces of native amber had been found on the Isle of Wight)or farther   afield. However, fourteen years later a professor at Vassar College in   New York came up with the answer. Using dental equipment designed for   tooth fillings, he ground up a tiny fragment of the amber, and then   observed how it absorbed infrared light. He determined that it was of   Baltic origin and was therefore around forty million years old.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    This was no huge surprise: most of the world's amber is from the Baltic   area of northern Europe. But how could the amber have gotten into   Gough's Cave so long ago? Today a small amount of amber is washed up   every year on eastern English beaches, but when the Gough's Cave piece   arrived, Britain was still linked to the rest of Europe by a vast land   bridge, which only disappeared around 8,500 years ago. Similarly, the   Baltic was not a sea but a huge freshwater lake, and it remained   enclosed by land until the North Sea crashed through Denmark around   5500 b.c. So, for that little piece of amber to travel the hundreds of   miles from its place of origin to Somerset, it must have been carried   there-by human hands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Perhaps it was a one-off piece, kept in a pouch by a single   long-distance migrant, but it is more likely, given the distance   involved, that it got there in a complicated series of trades.The   amber would have been handed from one early merchant to another,   swapped for food, weapons, flints, or furs, and its presence in the   Somerset cave was the earliest evidence of what would become an   extensive trading network across Europe: the Amber Route.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    To follow it back, we will travel east, across what are now the   southern English counties, covered then with balmier forests and   plains, and over the ancient land bridge into what is now northern   France or the Netherlands, which were then on higher ground. We will   continue into northern Germany, then farther north toward Denmark, or   perhaps east to the extended flatlands of the Vistula delta in Poland,   which for thousands of years has been the most productive source of   amber in the world. Amber trading happened here in such a frenzy that   it has been said to have hastened the arrival of the Bronze Age in   Baltic Europe. And in addition to the piece found in Gough's Cave,   there is evidence in ancient tombs and caves all over Europe, and even   in North Africa and the Middle East, that Baltic amber traveled for   many miles, from Stone age times to now. The height of its mystery was   the time of the ancient Greeks, who said that King Menelaus' palace was   lined with it, and it was almost equal in its magnificence to the   Kingdom of Heaven.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But why? Nowadays amber is often seen as a poor cousin to the other   treasures of the jewel box. It tends to be light, soft, cheap, and not   very rare at all. But accident, history, and some remarkable physical   qualities have meant that it has sometimes been valued more highly than   gold. It so intrigued early physicists that they named one of the most   extraordinary natural phenomena in the universe after it; and in its   time it has inspired treasure-seekers, dictators, thieves, crusaders,   scientists, madmen, and filmmakers. For some it has been a proof of   God's existence; for others it has confirmed the reverse.Author of Color; [quote]--Richmond Times-Dispatch","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304462405861,"sku":"NP9780345466952","price":20.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345466952.jpg?v=1767730396","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/jewels-isbn-9780345466952","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}