Rocks & Minerals in The Books Store

A reference guide to gems, semi-precious stones and crystals.

Gemstones and crystals are used for jewelry, industry, lasers and precision technology. Firefly Guide to Gems is a practical, compact guide to the identification and use of precious and semi-precious stones, novelty stones, agates and crystals.

An introduction explains geology, chemistry and gemstone properties in clear and accessible terms. Key aspects of gemstones are explained such as crystal structures and optical and physical properties.

The first section of the book focuses on precious gems in their many forms, with illustrations of priceless jewelry. Practical information includes:

• Fashioning and cutting
• Types and shapes of cut
• Collecting
• Handling and storing gemstones
• Weighing and measuring stones

The second and main section supplies complete descriptions of a wide range of gems, organized by chemical composition, for instance:

• Carbon (diamond)
• Aluminum oxide (saphire and ruby)
• Phosphate (turquoise)
• Silica (opal)

A fascinating profile of each gem is accompanied with color photographs of the raw crystal, common cuts, and finally polished for use in jewelry. At-a-glance charts provide technical details such as refractive index, crystal group, luster, hardness and cleavage for each gem.

Easy-to-read and abundantly illustrated, Firefly Guide to Gems is ideal for collectors and rockhounds.

After helping to usher in the age of personal computing by designing the graphical user interface of the Macintosh computer, Atkinson turned his visual and technical talents to nature photography. While shooting in the Painted Desert, Atkinson became intrigued with the brilliant colors in the petrified wood littering the ground. He brought home some polished rock slabs, photographed them in natural color and without magnification, and was enthralled. The photographs looked more like paintings of forgotten dreams than either rocks or photographs. Atkinson went on to borrow and photograph thousands of art-quality stones at gem shows.

From these thousands of stones, Atkinson has picked for WITHIN THE STONE those seventy-two that yielded the most striking, the most poetic, and the most ineffable images. Many of the photographs suggest the styles of particular masters of modern painting: Klee, Klimt, Turner, O’Keefe.

To accompany these images, the publisher commissioned seventy literary pieces for WITHIN THE STONE from seven top writers, each one accomplished in both scientific and artistic fields. Each writer was asked to free-associate with his or her ten assigned photographs as though they were Rorschach patterns on steroids. The seven contributors are DIANE ACKERMAN (poet and psychologist), PHILIP BALL (Nature editor and dramatist), JOHN HORGAN (science writer and philosopher), ANDREW REVKIN (New York Times reporter and screenplay writer), DORION SAGAN (science writer and novelist), TYLER VOLK (biologist and architect), and DAVID ZINDELL (science fiction novelist and mathematician).

Rare, romantic, and forever: The diamond industry depends on these myths to reap billions of dollars of profit. This sensational investigation explodes such fallacies and reveals how multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns create the impression of rarity and romance. It reveals a very secret and unromantic world, one that is dominated and controlled by a handful of mighty corporations.

With Leonardo DiCaprio's new movie The Blood Diamond making more people than ever aware of the seamy side of the diamond trade, Janine Roberts' explosive expos, taking us through seven decades of intrigue and manipulation, is the right book at the right time.

Dickinson's star charts are very handy, each covering a reasonable field of view and mapping the most interesting amateur objects. He gives good advice for planet watching, which he notes "is one of the few astronomical activities that can be conducted almost as well from the city as from dark rural locations."