Rocks and Minerals: A Guide to Field Identification (Golden Field Guide f/St. Martin's Press)

This is a very good intermediate book on minerals and mineralogy for advanced amateurs. It has many tables and scientific illustrations showing the atomic and molecular makeup of minerals and rocks, the crystal systems and the families of minerals based on chemical composition. There are many high quality illustrations of scores of minerals to accompany the text. This book fits easily in the collectors carryall and provides much useful information for the collector.

I grew up on Zim's Golden Guide to Rocks and Minerals Rocks and Minerals: A Guide to Familiar Minerals, Gems, Ores and Rocks (Golden Guides), which is great, but I wanted something a little more advanced for a son who is studying mineralogy, yet with similar great illustrations. This fit the bill perfectly. It may be a little dated, but geology and chemistry haven't changed. I wish I'd had this when I was younger.

Even though this book was printed in 1973 and is celebrating its 37th year, it remains one of my favorite mineral references.Particularly different about this field guide is its use of artist-drawn color renderings of the specimens discussed. Oftentimes in a photo-illustrated guide, one tends to use the photo as the "absolute" and may be disappointed to find that his personal collection is nowhere as fine as the color photos in most mineral guides.With the hand-drawn and full-color illustrations, it is much easier to use your imagination and see your specimen in place of the one in this book.The illustrations are clear, precise and certainly bring more of a sense of this guidebook being "hand-crafted" and full of collectible specimens that are not always National Mineral Collection quality.I especially like the author's many illustrations of the "idealized" look of the mineral. Those are far better than the stick-figure crystal illustrations found in every guide. This book uses them as well, but seeing a rendering of how the mineral would look without other mineral inclusions or on a base rock of one kind or another is a neat way to visualize how nature intended this specie of mineral to be formed.The book is also perfectly sized for pocket or day-pack carrying. It easily slips into a back pocket on one's jeans and can fit into a water bottle pouch on a day-pack as if it were made for this book.Mineralogically speaking, this guide is arranged in order of mineral type: native metals, sulfides, halides, etc. This arrangement certainly is helpful in learning where these minerals "live" on the elemental spectrum although that arranging does make identifying a specimen a bit more difficult since we humans tend to look first at things like color, luster or feel (hardness.)I just purchased this book again because I wore out my first copy that I bought sometime shortly after its publication.It was my constant companion on many hikes through our beautiful Alaskan scenery and more importantly, was instrumental in instilling in my two grandchildren a love of minerals and rock collecting. This began at age four for both my granddaughter and grandson. Today, as pre-teens, they both have growing collections and as a gift from granddad...A copy of this book in their collector's day-pack.Yes...when this copy wears out from use, I will buy it again!

Very nice guide to get you started.

It has so much information right down to atomic structure. The different types of chemical bonds makes sence as to the structure of rocks and hardness. I could go on but I found this with another book I have on mineral and rocks gave me a real understanding of earth science.

This book was recommend for a class on mineral identification at my school for my major. I am an amateur rock identifier at best.The drawings are hand-drawn but thats fine because important characteristics are exaggerated and useful. The information is solid, with classification information for the popular minerals and applicable background information. It is difficult to use this book to identify a mineral unless you already know the likely candidates. The minerals are arranged by mineral category, not by characteristics such as hardness, streak or density. An appendix with a matrix of popular minerals and their characteristics would be much easier to read and useful. My major gripe is the index (!) with too many references for each mineral. When looking for a rock, I have to go to the index first, flip through several pages with only a picture of a rock before I find the page with the actual description of it.Maybe this book is not for amateurs like me. I wouldn't return it, but am seriously considering trying my luck on another handbook. It is still a good reference to have for my new hobby even though it was not useful for the class I got it for.

Easy to use. Great value for the cost.

I found the book very technical and a bit boring in its visual style.The book was published long ago and kind of shows its age. Would have preferred more photos and illustrations to go along with the endless verbiage.

Very good

この本には鉱物の写真を全くと言って良いほど使っていません。しかしながら、著者による結晶系のイラストは大変参考になります。内容は図鑑と言うより専門書に近く、鉱物の属性、結晶構造、結晶の成長、理想結晶、鉱物の産地名、隕石、月の鉱物までも載っています。一つの鉱物をかなり深く説明しているため、鉱物収集家の人には物足りないかも知れませんが、実際に鉱物を採取する人にとっては非常に便利な一冊になります。使っている英語は専門用語が多いです。英語がある程度分かり鉱物を詳しく知りたい人向けだと思います。

This book has a good level of detail for someone with some prior understanding of basic geology. It's small, concise, and small enough to carry in a largish pocket. Has a very good intro section which explains in concise language and helpful images all the concepts and terms needed for the rest of the book. The remaining bulk of the book has very comprehensive coverage of minerals organised clearly into sections. There's no obvious geographical bias so this would be a useful book for anyone in the world. The hand-drawn/painted images are useful and give the reader a gist of how minerals appear, but I'd argue photographs are more useful (Of course, you shouldn't expect to identify minerals in the field from appearance alone, anyway). My only gripe is that the spine broke within a couple of weeks and pages began to fall out. This is a fairly old publication and the glue used to hold the pages had hardened and become inflexible. Still, not bad for a penny.