The place is ancient Egypt. You need lumber to build a house. No trees grow in Egypts desert, but a ship from Lebanon regularly brings cedar logs to a nearby port. How do you get lumber for your house? You take many bundles of papyrus and a sack of frankincense to the port and offer them to the ships captain in exchange for his logs. The captain knows he can sell your goods back home at a profit. You bargain, but in the end, he takes your goods, and...

First discovered in 1930, the diamonds of Sierra Leone have funded one of the most savage rebel campaigns in modern history. These "blood diamonds" are smuggled out of West Africa and sold to legitimate diamond merchants in London, Antwerp, and New York. This book is the gripping tale of how the diamond smuggling works, how the rebel war has effectively destroyed Sierra Leone and its people, and how the policies of the diamond industry--institutionalized...