Lapidarium: The Secret Lives of Stones

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Lapidarium is a wonderfully informative history of sixty of the most fascinating stones, their many stories and the people and places linked with them. This book is a fascinating glimpse into the world of precious stones and what they have meant to people over the years. Includes the stories of various chemists, archaeologists, jewelers, prospectors, collectors, among others.

It is accepted by you that Daunt Books has no control over additional charges in relation to customs clearance. Well, not really, but that is the tone this book takes, and despite the interesting collection of rocks and minerals detailed in this book, the focus is heavily and irredeemably skewed towards art and history. With pertinent references to sustainability, this is a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening book with perfectly paced narration. The author, it seems, banks on the strengths of her background, and while the book promises to engage us with archeology, geology, mythology, literature, science, sociology and philosophy, any interesting cross-disciplinary facts are drowned out by the sheer volume of historical detailing.While the diversity of the stones and the geology are fascinating, what I particularly enjoyed was learning about the ways in which humans have used these stones, from the Malachite Room in Russia’s Winter Palace to the giant stone Medusa heads in the underground cisterns in Istanbul to the ‘meat stone’ that draws crowds in Taipei. In jewelry my preference has always been for the semiprecious stones that had some character and color to them. An absolute feast for the senses, the book itself feels very much like a collector’s treasure hoarded wunderkammer of mythic and mysterious curiosities. I wanted to love it – I think there should be loads of books encouraging us to reconnect with the natural world, to come away with some general knowledge about our planet and our surroundings and how it's shaped human civilisation at large. Not all the stories are happy - for instance, you'll learn about the past and present abuses involved in the coltan and coal mining industries - but they are such interesting introductions to all kinds of topics you might never have heard of.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The selections struck me as arbitrary, despite the author’s explanations as to why certain things belonged in one chapter rather than another.Here's the thing: I wanted to be able to come away from each chapter able to say a couple of sentences about each stone, but this book will leave you with a half–remembered sentence on someone who owned the stone in a century you probably won't remember. g. the daughters of Helios the sun god, and their tears of elektron or 'beaming sun', and how elektron is the root to electricity etc etc), we are offered the greek name, and then. These are stories about rocks, it’s not a geological textbook, but I learned a hell of a lot on the way, mostly I learned how little I know about geology and how cool rocks are.