(FORTUNE Magazine) – Starry-eyed lovers with a politically conscious bent would do well to read The Last Empire (Farrar Straus Giroux, $25) before buying an engagement ring. Author Stefan Kanfer's delicious account of the greed, racism, and ruthlessness of the ''Randlords'' who spawned South Africa's diamond industry just might prompt them to acquire a memento with more redeeming social value: say, Philip Morris stock. The 19th-century magnates we meet here are a Dickensian pack of buccaneers: Barney Barnato (an ex-music hall impresario), that grand imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, and the towering, universally despised Joseph Benjamin Robinson (known for horsewhipping folks who crossed him). Wisely, Kanfer concentrates his tale on these Brobdingnagian personalities. At the crux of his history is De Beers Consolidated Mines. Originally cobbled together by Rhodes, it was the German-Jewish Oppenheimer family, under soft-spoken grandpa Ernest, who built De Beers and its affiliates into an ever-expanding octopus that became the envy of OPEC and every other would-be monopolist. From Oppenheimer's assumption of control in 1929 through his son Harry Oppenheimer's rule into the 1980s, De Beers has grown despite depression, war, revolution, sanctions, and strikes. Next in line: grandson Nicholas, now chairman of De Beers's Central Selling Organization -- the key subsidiary that regulates the diamond trade.

Kanfer is merely workmanlike when explaining the murky business of running a modern-day cartel. Read him, above all, for his juicy recounting of one of the more colorful industrial sagas of all time.