Stoned

As entertaining as it is incisive, Stoned is a raucous journey through the history of human desire for what is rare, and therefore precious. In this brilliant account of how eight jewels shaped the course of history, jeweller and scientist Aja Raden tells an original and often startling story about our unshakeable addiction to beauty and the darker side of human desire. Masterfully weaving together pop science and history, Stoned breaks history into three categories—Want, Take, and Have—and explains what the diamond on your finger has to do with the GI Bill, why green-tinted jewellery has been exalted by so many cultures, why the glass beads that bought Manhattan for the Dutch were initially considered a fair trade, and how the French Revolution started over a coveted necklace.