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A tour of the diamond industry explores the historically rich network connecting Communist Siberia, Israel, and New York's diamond district, and profiles some of the industry's more colorful characters, including the author's father.
For over 1,400 years in ancient Israel, the Sanctuary Tax was unchanged. God had created a sound monetary system that experienced no inflation, despite wars, royal intrigue, foreign invaders, and 70 years spent in Babylonian captivity. Furthermore, the prophet Ezekiel describes a third temple to be built 5, 50, or 500 years from now. In this future temple, the Sanctuary Tax is the same as it was in the days of Moses. So, what’s the answer? A partial answer is discovered in the Hebrew word “shekel.” The definition of shekel is “weight.” As recently as the 18th Century, the British Empire had two centuries of no inflation. During this period, bank clerks’ salaries were unchanged for a century, all because of no inflation. With paper currencies, the world’s monies have lost their weight. Consequently, this book offers alternatives for 21st Century citizens to help protect their finances--and have more control over their assets, regardless of the evening news.
Following diamonds from African mines to the necklines of high society women, this international history shows why Jews were central to the transatlantic gem trade and its growth into a global industry. During the late nineteenth century, tens of thousands of diggers, prospectors, merchants, and dealers extracted and shipped over 50 million carats of diamonds from South Africa to London. The primary supplier to the world, South Africa's diamond fields became one of the formative sites of modern capitalist production. At each stage of the diamond's route through the British empire and beyond-from Cape Town to London, from Amsterdam to New York City-carbon gems were primarily mined, processed,...
Acclaimed author Patricia O’Toole’s “superb” (The New York Times) account of Woodrow Wilson, one of the most high-minded, consequential, and controversial US presidents. A “gripping” (USA TODAY) biography, The Moralist is “an essential contribution to presidential history” (Booklist, starred review). “In graceful prose and deep scholarship, Patricia O’Toole casts new light on the presidency of Woodrow Wilson” (Star Tribune, Minneapolis). The Moralist shows how Wilson was a progressive who enjoyed unprecedented success in leveling the economic playing field, but he was behind the times on racial equality and women’s suffrage. As a Southern boy during the Civil War, he ...
“ FOR EVEN IN NAZI VIENNA, Trudi realized, women still looked in the mirror. . . . She knows that even in the bleak darkness, we feel, love, desire. She left no child (she and Walter tried, with no success); her hats are long lost, but her book is her legacy, discovered once again.” —From the introduction by Linda Grant, a uthor of The Clothes on Their Backs, The Thoughtful Dresser and We Had It So Good In 1938 Trudi Kanter, stunningly beautiful, chic and charismatic, was a hat designer for the best-dressed women in Vienna. She frequented the most elegant cafés. She had suitors. She flew to Paris to see the latest fashions. And she fell deeply in love with Walter Ehrlich, a charming a...
American and Jewish historians have long shied away from the topic of Jews and business. Avoidance patterns grew in part from old, often negative stereotypes that linked Jews with money, and the perceived ease and regularity with which they found success with money, condemning Jews for their desires for wealth and their proclivities for turning a profit. A new, dauntless generation of historians, however, realizes that Jewish business has had and continues to have a profound impact on American culture and development, and patterns of immigrant Jewish exploration of business opportunities reflect internal, communal, Jewish-cultural structures and their relationship to the larger non-Jewish world. As such, they see the subject rightly as a vital and underexplored area of study. Doing Business in America: A Jewish History, edited by Hasia R. Diner, rises to the challenge of taking on the long-unspoken taboo subject, comprising leading scholars and exploring an array of key topics in this important and growing area of research.
Sisters Lulu and Merry share a terrible past. When Lulu was only a child, she let her drunken father into the family home and watched him kill her mother - and then turn on six-year-old Merry. Years later, clinging to the wreckage of their childhood, the sisters try to make sense of what happened. Bound by their love for each other but divided by private grief, forgiveness comes at a higher price than either could have imagined. The Murderer's Daughters is a gripping and moving story of the ramifications of one violent act and the endurance of family loyalty - even when it is stretched to the very limit.
The seemingly blind love of a wife for her husband as he conquers Wall Street, and her extraordinary, perhaps foolish, loyalty during his precipitous fall, is expertly explored in this “ripped-from-the-headlines story about love, ambition, and forgiveness” (PopSugar)—perfect for fans of the TV show Billions. Phoebe recognizes fire in Jake Pierce’s belly from the moment they meet as teenagers. After they marry and he creates a financial dynasty, she trusts him without hesitation—unaware his hunger for success hides a dark talent for deception. But when Phoebe learns her husband’s triumph and vast reach rests on an elaborate Ponzi scheme, her world unravels. While Jake is trapped i...
A sweeping history of our enduring passion for diamonds—and the exploitative industry that fuels it. Blood, Sweat and Earth is a hard-hitting historical exposé of the diamond industry, focusing on the exploitation of workers and the environment, the monopolization of uncut diamonds, and how little this has changed over time. It describes the use of forced labor and political oppression by Indian sultans, Portuguese colonizers in Brazil, and Western industrialists in many parts of Africa—as well as the hoarding of diamonds to maintain high prices, from the English East India Company to De Beers. While recent discoveries of diamond deposits in Siberia, Canada, and Australia have brought an end to monopolization, the book shows that advances in the production of synthetic diamonds have not yet been able to eradicate the exploitation caused by the world’s unquenchable thirst for sparkle.