The Last Empire: South Africa, Diamonds and De Beers

Published by Coronet, 1994, softcover, illustrated, 452 pages, some wear to covers otherwise condition: very good.

With a scholar's precision and a novelist's eye, Stefan Kanfer tells the inside story of De Beers Consolidated Mines - from the nineteenth century diamond rush that transformed Johannes De Beer's humble South African farm into an exotic klondike, to the Oppenheimers' shadow empire that has achieved umatched global reach.

In focusing upon the diamond and gold industries of South Africa, this book also tackles the repercussions that came about and a general history of the land itself. De Beers is the prominent centrepoint but its also a revealing story of South Africas social world and how money influenced the evolution of apartheid.