An Introduction to the Rock Forming Minerals

Great reference book for any geologist or rock hound. Contains amazing amounts of information on rock forming minerals.

The student edition of Deer Howie and Zussman is the most important mineralogy book that geology students should have in their collection. It provides information that not only helps while learning mineralogy, but becomes an essential and much consulted reference in later years. By limiting itself to the rock forming minerals it provides the solid information for learning real-world mineralogy without the trivial frills. This is the most consulted book on my bookshelf.

Includes chapters on every major rock-forming mineral, with sections on structure, chemistry, optical and physical properties, distinguishing features, and paragenesis for almost every mineral. All this is presented in a clear and organized fashion.Extremely useful reference book. As a grad student studying mineralogy, I couldn't do without it. A+

An great book. I have the 13th impression of this book published in 1982. We used this book in second year mineralogy and found it very useful not only in mineraology but throughout the remaining years of our geology program at University. The book is easy to use and has all the different groups, ortho- ring silicates, chain silicates, sheet silicates, framework silicates and non silicates and provides information pertaining to properties, crystal structure, chemistry and paragenesis.

This book is an absolute must for anyone working with minerals in any way. Beeing an introduction to rockforming minerals it is very conprehensive. It is very valuable not only as a textbook but also as a handbook in the lab. As the title says it covers the rockforming minerals so dont expect to find exotic minearls. You can though expect to find a relatively detailed introduction to the most important minerals. It far surpasses any student minaralogy to my knowledge.