Product Description: Gem and Stone celebrates 50 different gems ranging from timeless classics like diamond and emerald to exotic beauties such as lapis lazuli, peridot, and even petrified wood. Altman's photographs capture the splendor of each gem alongside brief text highlighting the stones' chemical makeups, metaphysical properties, and associated folklore throughout human history...read more

A guide to more than six hundred specimens includes detailed descriptions and illustrations.

(view table of contents)

Provides photographs of more than 220 varieties of minerals, rocks, and fossils.

Product Description: Pages of full-color photos identify mineral formations as common as iron and sulfur and as precious as diamonds and rubies. Minerals are shown as they occur both in natural deposits and in their cut-and-polished states. Readers get an overview of mineral sources, gem cutting, imitation gems, metals and metal working, and much more...read more

The encyclopaedia contains more than 13,000 A-Z entries, colour illustrations, 150 special box features and 200 individual country features.

A comprehensive full-color handbook for identifying and collecting minerals the world over. What to look for, how to test, and how to identify more than five hundred stones--all the answers are provided in this essential rock collecting guide.

Describes the appearance, formation, and structure of hundreds of specimens

Line drawings and color photographs enhance a field guide that describes the appearance, formation, and structure of hundreds of specimens

Vivid photographs supplement practical data on the characteristics and collection of rock and mineral specimens

Provides information on the physical properties, crystal system, and chemical composition of common minerals