@article{579332,
      recid = {579332},
      author = {Hart, Matthew,},
      title = {Gold : the race for the world's most seductive metal /},
      pages = {290 pages ;},
      abstract = {"From the lost empires of the Sahara to today's frenzied  global gold rush, a blazing exploration of the human love  affair with gold by the award-winning author of Diamond.  Since the 2008 financial crisis, the price of gold has  skyrocketed--in three years more than doubling from $800 an  ounce to $1900. This massive spike kicked off an  unprecedented global gold-mining and exploration boom, much  bigger than the Gold Rush of the 1800s. In Gold, acclaimed  author Matthew Hart takes you on an unforgettable journey  around the world and through history to tell the incredible  story of how gold became the world's most precious  commodity. Beginning with a page-turning dispatch from the  crime-ridden, dangerous inferno of the world's deepest  mine, Hart pulls back to survey gold's tempestuous past.  From the earliest civilizations, 6,000 years ago, when gold  was an icon of sacred and kingly power, Hart tracks its  evolution, through conquest, murder, and international  mayhem, into the speculative casino-chip that the metal has  become. On this spellbinding journey the reader will  witness the Spanish plunder of the New World, a century of  pillage that crushed the glittering Inca empire of the  Andes and transferred its staggering wealth to Europe. Hart  describes each boom and bust in gold's long story, each  panic and shock, with a masterful storytelling hand,  leading the reader to the present day--to the London vaults  that hold the multi-ton hoards of such shadowy investors as  the American gold fund called 'the Spider,' to the amazing  gold-rich bamboo forests of eastern Senegal, and to the  piratical carnival of theft that enlivens the world's  greatest gold-producing engine: China. With writing  described as 'polished and fiery' (Publishers Weekly), Hart  weaves together history and cutthroat economics to reveal  the human dramas that have driven our lust for a precious  yellow metal"--},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/579332},
}