This book talks a lot about the history of stones, how they came to be, their presence in geological and human history, and culture.

A fascinating history of stones and the surprising ways they have - and continue to - shape, influence and inspire us, in a beautiful volume. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. I felt like I was reading a set of blog posts--not systematic, but an agreeable and informative experience overall.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. As a broadcaster she can been heard (and sometimes seen) on programmes including BBC Radio 4’s Front Row and Art That Made Us. We are told of incredible creations and decorations, large and small, carved from these prized stones. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Referencing science, history, chemistry, physics, literature, philosophy, and pop culture, Lapidarium is an extravagantly storied chamber of stones, the next best thing to having a secret sparkling cache of curios at your fingertips.

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.Stone by stone, story by fascinating story, Lapidarium builds into a dazzling, epoch-spanning adventure through human culture, and beyond. Together, they explore how human culture has formed stone, and the roles stone has played in forming human culture. Also points out that the provenances of most of the most famous jewels are fabricated (especially the ones claiming to go back centuries). The essays are written from a British point of view, which took a little getting used to (especially some of the pronunciations in audio book), but it was very well done. Writing with humor, compassion, and wit (I cackled out loud more times than I can count), Hettie leads us sure-footedly on our craggy journey down a glittering path of 60 mineralogical eccentricities, ancient souvenirs of deep-Earth drama, and travelogues that cross the strata of time as well as space.

I would have appreciated photographs of some of the wonders described - it would have been handier than having to use Google.Yet, there's hardly any science at all, and what little there is – well, it's not very well explained. 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. Judah's pages are filled with eccentrics and inventors, with the obsessive pursuit of beauty, the hopeful constructions of belief and the thirst for progress and improvement. Aside from all of that I’m delighted I was locked out because it’s an incredibly interesting book and one I was genuinely sad to finish a couple of days later. Her stories also bear out the tragic pattern of so much engagement with the natural world - what begins in wonder leads to greed andrapacious extraction.