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THE NATURE OF DIAMONDS

Edited by George E. Harlow, Cambridge University Press in association with American Museum of Natural History (1998) Hard cover $74.95, soft cover $29.95, 278 p.

Department of Geosciences, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01002, E-mail haggerty@geo.umass.edu

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

From "old four legs," the coelacanth once thought to be extinct, to sub-Saharan dioramas of early man on the Savannah, we saw them all in museums that were a must on our adventurous holidays while growing up in Africa. And there were displays of the epic discovery of diamonds, the history of consolidation, and chronicles of events that later fueled the mining of gold and altered the continent forever. Spectacular, and they left indelible impressions. But everything was always dusty, red, and oxidized, and so were the custodians on occasion. Moving to London and college in the 1960s, museums were our extended laboratories, but the dust persisted, only there it was darker and more reduced.

Happily, all that has changed and George Harlow’s book is a fine example of the new direction that museums have taken in their outreach programs of education. His creation of "The Nature of Diamonds," held at the American Museum . . . [Full Text of this Article]