Simon & Schuster's Guide to Gems and Precious Stones

This is an excellent book for anyone wanting to learn about the physical properties of gemstones. It would be especially useful to students interested in the scientific properties of gems. I found it useful because it describes where gemstones are found and how and when they were discovered. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject.

This books been around for quite a number of years now but has to be simply the BEST illustrated book on Gems there is. It's absolutely jam packed FULL of all the information you need to learn about precious stones.

and it is a little more technical than the rest (explains things like twinning, establishment of density, calculating specific gravity, cleavage, moh's scale, refractive indices, law of refraction, genesis, cutting, cutting styles etc). it includes gem descriptions in much detail (thou the order in which they are arranged is a mystery to me and really bugs me, as i have to flip and flip until i find what i need). for diamond it includes a table comparing 4 color grading systems used (which is cool). large section on organic gems and synthetics. all in all i see it as a really good (almost) professional level book on gems and precious stones.

I can't believe how much information is in this book. I am just learning about gems. There are so many different gems that are the same color. These pictures are worth 10 times the cost of the book. My 10 year old granddaughter also loves it.

Easy to read and fun to use. Photos are excellent and make identification of gems fun and relatively easy. I particularly liked the section on lab gems. I have several beautiful created stones and now I have a much better understanding of how they were made.