This book can be very informative if you know what you're looking for in it. I would reccomend it to students who are geology majors if it is not already required.

This book, by a photographer of minerals very well known to readers of periodicals such as the Mineralogical Record, is a useful introduction to the subject. If you do not have a full set of back issues of the Min. Rec., this will tell you how to get high quality examples of the rather stylized genre of mineral photography. However, there really is not all that much useful information in the book which is unavailable to those dedicated folks who have complete sets of that journal, which has published guides to photography on a couple of occasions.

The color photos in the book are excellent, the B&W ones just OK, and the text ... it is in a rather odd font with very "thin" lines.

Lewis (Not "Flewis") wrote a decent text a number of years ago. It was then expanded to a companion volume (Analytical Sedimentology) with another author. The two nicely complement each other but the mind boggles at a price of almost $100 per each. The publisher has clearly made little effort to control the cost. Redundancy between the two volumes is excessive, hard cover rather than soft is used and, indeed, both could easily have been combined in one less pricey volume. A valuable resource to students and professionals has therefore been compromised by publisher, author or both due to ignorance, greed or stupidity. A terrible shame!

Following his earlier book "The New Resource Wars", Al Gedicks eloquently presents numerous negative case studies regarding exploitative mining. In this book, I was hoping there would be more direct social science analysis as well. However, there is simply more descriptive and investigative material about pernicious cases of exploitation. Instead, it would have been useful to also consider some cases of corporate resposibility, or cases where Native communities have in fact chosen to go forward with mining and have had positive experiences -- indeed cases of mines such as the Raglan project in Quebec, The Red Dog Mine in Alaska, Argyle in Australia, mining in Botswana and Ghana or oil in Brunei might also have provided an interesting comparison. Nevertheless, the book certainly has some good expository material on some of the "bad boy" companies. It is important to consider that there might also be some better players in the mix -- which the activist perspective in this book does not want to even acknowledge.

Alt and Hyndman provide an interesting summary of rock types encountered on a good variety of Northern CA highways. In plain language, they partially unravel the complicated, contorted geology of northern CA as seen through the roadcuts and park drives. This book's biggest deficiency, compared to others in the Roadside Geology series, is its failure to provide specific names and formation periods for many roadside rock layers mentioned, especially in the Sierras, Klamaths and Modoc Plateau. This info is a valuable time-saver for an amateur rockhound. For numerous excellent examples of the naming and dating I am talking about, read Roadside Geology of Texas by Darwin Spearing. Despite this important flaw (for the rockhound who catalogs his specimens), I recommend this book for anyone interested in geology who will be travelling across northern CA.

This has been a good reference book for me in my rockhounding in Colorado. I am glad to see the Author is publishing a second edition. I will purchase it when it comes out. My current copy is copyrighted in 1995. Unless I had a burning desire to purchase this book I would wait until the new edition comes out. I like the authors site format including the best season to collect. Colorado seasons and weather should be taken seriously. I would also suggest that you fully read and follow the introduction section. I have given the book three stars based mainly on it's age. If I were to use the current edition for collecting I would try and verify that the desired site (s) were still open with a local rock club. My one wish for both the Falcon guides and the Gem trail guides is that they include GPS coordinates in the directions. At least for the main turn-off and the starting collecting point. It's real handy to have these coordinates for both the field locations and for Mapping software at home to preplan the trip.

I enjoyed reading this book the author has put a good amount of time and effort in the collection of collecting sites. I like the format used including the best time of the year to collect. In the southwest it does get really really hot in the summer. The elevation is also important for people with mid winter cabin fever. I used that data to successfully collect petrified wood in Cuba in January. The forward introduction is important to read for people not used to living and hiking in New Mexico. I have given this book a three star rating based mainly on it's age. It's been around since 1995. that means that the site data is eight years old. I found that the sites near big cities like Albuquerque tended to be picked over or even worse closed to collecting. All of the west has had a population boom and New Mexico is no exception. the sites near smaller towns were fairly well intact. If you are going to use this book or any other guide I would check with local rock shops before traveling any distance to a new site. If the author or the published ever reads this review I would like to suggest that in the site location that they include the GPS data for main turn - offs and the initial starting points for collecting. In the case of this book eight years is a long time for forest service roads to stay intact or new ones created. I also use Mapping software on my PC to pull up topo and aerial maps of the area. I would also suggest a notation on every site listing the date when it was visited.

This book is very academic and plodding. I enjoyed the class but not this book. It was hard to read and boring. I had to force myself to get through it.

This is a well organized collection of many of the clues that can be founed in several other sources. The author offers little new insight with the exception of a cave that she discovered. It is a good book for beginners who would like an introduction to the clues pertaining to the lost dutchman's mine.

Wait for it to come out on video!