Mineral collecting among amateur “rockhounds” is currently at an all-time high, with a new generation of minerals enthusiasts scouring old quarries, road cuts, and exposed landscapes. To help these enthusiasts, a comprehensive guidebook with clear photographs and accurate data is essential, and this guidebook delivers just that.

Featuring a compact yet robust design, the guidebook includes over 700 different minerals and rocks, conveniently grouped by color to aid navigation throughout the book. Minerals such as blue, red, yellow, brown, green, white, and black crystals are included, as well as brown and gray sedimentary rocks, and even meteorites for the fortunate few who come across them.

Each has a picture — four to a page — opposite detailed but clear data:

• Chemical formula
• Hardness
• Color
• Density
• Lustre
• Cleavage
• Fracture
• Tenacity
• Crystal form

Similar minerals and where they are likely to occur. And many will have a diagram of its crystal form — up to four, for fluorite, for example.

The Minerals Encyclopedia is unusual for the number of minerals it covers: more than 700 in 448 pages, with a useful glossary, an introduction to mineral collecting, printed front and back flaps that offer quick reference in the field, and a measuring rule on the back cover. This is a superior reference for rockhounds, geology students and outdoors people with an interest in what’s under their feet.