Diamonds In The Desert

After both of her parents died, Britt, the eldest of three sisters, worked her hardest to manage their mining business and take care of the family. Then she discovered diamonds on the family’s land… Britt is now convinced that this will save the business. When a man shows some interest in going into business with Britt, she agrees to meet his representative, whose clever, seductive advances she can’t resist. Then she learns that this “representative” was the man himself, and Britt is filled with anxiety. What is his true objective?

Twelve-year-old Tetsu eats, sleeps and breathes baseball. It’s all he ever thinks about. But after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Tetsu and his family are forced from their home into an internment camp in the Arizona desert with other Japanese Americans, and baseball becomes the last thing on his mind. The camp isn’t technically a prison, but it sure feels like one when there’s nothing to do and no place to go. So when a man starts up a boys’ baseball team, Tetsu is only too eager to play again. But with his sister suddenly falling ill, and his father taken away for questioning, Tetsu is forced to choose between his family and his love of the game.

This well written anecdotal account of the early days of diamond production in Namibia focuses on the settler pioneer August Stauch, who has also become a legend among the settler community today. The author gives a vivid description of the major diamond discoveries and the rush for claims in 1908, followed by the struggle for control and monopoly which eventually led to the takeover by De Beers. It also deals with the political career of August Stauch as a member of the old "Landesrat" and of the Legislative Assembly established in 1926, and describes the fall of his business empire in Germany and Namibia in the interwar period. The biography glorifies a time which, in the overall history of diamond mining in Namibia, is relatively unimportant, and tends to reinforce dearly held colonial myths ("the men who made South West"). It is lavishly illustrated with photos, drawings and facsimile prints of documents. (Eriksen/Moorsom 1989).

After both of her parents died, Britt, the eldest of three sisters, worked her hardest to manage their mining business and take care of the family. Then she discovered diamonds on the family’s land… Britt is now convinced that this will save the business. When a man shows some interest in going into business with Britt, she agrees to meet his representative, whose clever, seductive advances she can’t resist. Then she learns that this “representative” was the man himself, and Britt is filled with anxiety. What is his true objective?

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Barely forty years ago, Abu Dhabi was a fishing village on the Arabian Gulf. Now the capital of the United Arab Emirates, its citizens are each worth $17 million, it holds major stakes in Western economies, and has money to burn. In this timely, revealing and evocative portrait of a global player, Jo Tatchell traces the emirate's dramatic development and the sometimes ruinous effect of extreme wealth on its people and their desert culture. And as its rulers fund another giant leap forward, she probes behind the official facade to examine whether this secretive and controlled society can realise its breathtaking plans to transform relations between East and West.