National Audubon Society Field Guide to Rocks and Minerals: North America (National Audubon Society Field Guides)

Lovely photos with great descriptions & information on rocks, minerals, crystals, & gems.

Although it's dated and only covers North American rocks and minerals, it's a great reference to have.

Excellent resource to determine identification of rocks for inventory and pricing as well as customer's reference for a purchase.

I have ad my copy for many years and reference it very frequently. it contains hundreds of color photos and and an excellent text article for each mineral species. It would not be possible to create a field guide that is all-inclusive but this book is as close to that lofty goal as is practical. It is a field guide and is necessarily compact and totable. But note that it has over 700 pages including photos. The information is pretty much timeless, so the date of publication matters little. I don't think there is a book available on rocks and minerals of such overall utility and quality. All of the Audubon guides are superb- I just ordered one on mushrooms for our oldest daughter who has an interest in mycology. I have the North American Trees book and it is similarly excellent. You just can't do better for the money.

The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals is a beautiful book packed full of information. The guide, including index, is 850 pages, with over 250 full color pages featuring pretty much every rock and mineral you will come across in North America. The regular pages are very thin, similar to the paper bibles are printed on. This thin paper is very flimsy and may not hold up well to the kind of abuse it would take if you actually carried it in the field. The thiness also allows the print on the other side to show through, making it difficult to read sometimes. The print is especially small, contributing to some readability problems.The information is most certainly complete, though. The first 48 pages talk about the various characteristics that are used to identify minerals. It includes brief descriptions of the characteristics and in some cases line drawings. The next section is a "visual key" to minerals. The minerals are arranged by color and form. A small icon at the edge of the pages allows you to quickly flip through the key to find the type of mineral you are looking for. For instance, if you found something orange and globular you can quickly fan through the pages using your thumb until you see the appropriate icon. Then you can look at beautiful pictures of minerals that match those characteristics.The specimen pictures really are beautiful, but probably are not particularly useful. They are all gorgeous museum quality specimens that likely will not look like anyting you find in the field. But it does help you narrow it down to a list of suspects, and then you can go on from there. The plates include the mineral name and the page number where you will find the more useful information.There is also a "descriptive key" in case you don't want to use the images. This is probably the most useful part of the book. It allows you to take information you have gathered about your mineral--including color, hardness, cleavage, and form--and quickly reference it. This section is organized by hardness and color. Once you have your suspect this section refers you to the pages where you can find more information about these minerals.The information section is very thorough. It not only presents the various physical and chemical characteristics of the mineral, but also tells you where the mineral is likely to be found and what other types of minerals would be found in the same area. That information is very useful for ruling out suspects.The next section is on rocks. The arrangement is very similar. Information about the various characteristics of rocks is presented at the beginning of the section, followed by a visual key. Unlike the mineral section, however, there is not a section with a descriptive key. The visual key references to information pages that are just as thorough as the mineral pages.At the end there is a brief section on rock and mineral collecting and the environments in which various minerals are found. The appendices also include interesting information, including a glossary and information about rock-forming minerals, as well as a list of chemical abbreviations. The index is alphabatized by rock and mineral names and allows to quickly reference a specific rock or mineral you may be curious about.The information is excellent. The arrangement is logical and intuitive. The pictures, whether useful or not, are stunning. My only complaint about this field guide is that it is a little bit awkward. The pages are about 3.5" wide and 7.5" tall, and the book is approximately 1.25" inches thick. The thickness makes it a little difficult to handle, especially when you first get it and the binding is still tight. I would have liked it to be a little thinner. The beautiful pictures are three to a page and quite large (you can look at all the minerals in "look inside this book" thing here at Amazon). I think the pictures could have been equally as effective if made a little smaller and presented 6 to a page. That would have reduced the page count by more than 150 pages and made it a little easier to handle.That being said, I really can't complain. The fact that Audubon was able to fit this much information into such a compact volume is really impressive. I do recommend anyone with troubled vision to get a magnifying glass (or loupe!) with this purchase, though.

Love that it tells me where I can find the rocks and gems I am looking for!

I've purchased this book probably six or seven times as it gets stolen for me every time I buy it I love this book and find it used in like new condition used at a lower price than what Barnes and nobles was was absolutely amazing very very pleased

My interest in the subject of rocks and minerals is both scientific and spiritual. For me, the best book that introduced me to the subject with easy to understand scientific and spiritual use descriptions as well as the requisite gorgeous color photography is "Crystals" by Jennie Harding. I would highly recommendthis book as a beginners book for both its scientific and spiritual perspectives.But as you get hungry for more, then's the time to purchase the Audubon book. From a solely scientific perspective, besides so many helpful photos, descriptions, glossary of terminology, etc., there are detailed sections on minerals/crystals and stone (granites, horneblends, etc.) Filled with technical but very helpful details on identification and collection, if you want to investigate the subject from strictly an academic or collector's pov, make this your initial purchase.

This is the best rock book I’m so glad I bought it. So many color photos with an in depth description of each rock, etc. These books by Audubon are always the best books we have many of their titles. They are worth their weight in gold. I keep mine in a zip lock bag in my backpack for adventures. Highly recommended!

Excellent book in terms of content. However, print quality of this edition is much poorer than the older edition I have from twenty years ago. Images on colour plates are not as crisp, colours are muted and the contrast is flatter. Also, text on black and white pages is not as crisp.

Great reference book

No se nota que este libro lo hayan hecho con cariño. Le falta amor. Como si lo hubieran tenido que hacer a fuerza. Fotos muy viejas, obsoletas, de muy baja calidad, pierdas raras e imposibles de encontrar en la naturaleza.No propone nada de nada.

This is awesome! I am so addicted to flipping through it to identify different finds. I like that the minerals are sorted by colour, but the descriptions are sorted by composition so you have to do a lot of flipping back and forth. Good pictures and just a ton of information. I am a beginner so I have a lot of learning to do; but I imagine it would be very useful to experienced rock hounds as well.