Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Whether you are a serious collector or an information-seeking amateur, this incomparably beautiful, authoritative guide will prove an invaluable reference.

Average Customer Rating:

Beautiful pictures & Informative	Customer Rating:
Great pictures of EVERY rock and mineral, a very helpful aspect of this book. Also has informative and thorough text to describe characteristics of minerals.

Simon & Schuster's Guide to Rocks & Minerals	Customer Rating:
Great product...very concise yet covers everything that you need to know about rocks and minerals

Very Informative	Customer Rating:
A very good boook for information on the properties of crystals, minerals. Includes table of elements which is very helpful. Great for anyone, scientific of metaphysical.

Super!

Customer Rating:

This is a thick little book. The introduction is detailed, informative, mathematic, and scientific. I learned a lot about how minerals are formed and grow by just reading the intro. The book has great color pictures and the descriptions are placed on the facing pages next to the pics. Shows the mineral's form, specific gravity, rarity, and where the specimen in the pic was found. Also describes the physical properties, occurrence, environment, and uses of the mineral. I especially like the back section 'Introduction to Rocks'. There they talk about the earth's layers of crust, sedimentary processes, volcanic activity, rock collection, meteorites, and generally a whole lot about rocks! Then there is a bunch of pictures of rocks with their descriptions like the mineral section. This is a very handy guide whether collecting in the field, or if you just want to learn about rocks and minerals. Would recommend.

Accuracy of Claims

Customer Rating:

While a reasonably good reference guide, it makes the grievous error of claiming Franklinite and Zincite from Franklin, NJ are "rare". True only if you consider a mineral that was estimated to be "around 800 million tons" to be rare. It was mined in both Franklin and Ogdensburg {Sterling Hill} for over 100 years because it was so plentiful. These minerals are only rare in the same sense that a Brooklyn, NY phone book is rare.........OUTSIDE of Brooklyn, NY! People on eBay reference this guide to "prove" the rarity of the minerals and it's just WRONG!