Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones - Hardcover

Journalist Greg Campbell leads the reader down the international diamond trail of brutality, horror, and profit - providing an on-the-ground and in-the-mines story of global consequence. First discovered in 1930, the diamonds of Sierra Leone have funded one of the most savage rebel campaigns in modern history. These blood diamonds are smuggled out of West Africa and sold to legitimate diamond merchants in London, Antwerp, and New York, often with the complicity of the international diamond industry. Eventually, these very diamonds find their way into the rings and necklaces of brides and spouses the world over. Blood Diamonds is the gripping tale of how the diamond smuggling works, how the rebel war has effectively destroyed Sierra Leone and its people, and how the policies of the diamond industry - institutionalized in the 1880s by the De Beers cartel - have allowed it to happen. Award-winning journalist Greg Campbell traces the deadly trail of these diamonds, many of which are brought to the world market by fanatical enemies, including the Al Qaeda network. These repercussions of diamond smuggling are felt far beyond the borders of the poor and war-ridden country of Sierra Leone, and the consequences of overlooking this African tragedy, as the world has seen, are both shockingly deadly and unquestionably global.

Greg Campbell is an award-winning freelance journalist and the author of The Road to Kosovo: A Balkan Diary. His work has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, the San Francisco Chronicle and the fifth edition of Lonely Planet's West Africa guidebook. He lives in Longmont, Colorado.