A contemporary successor to the Louis V. Pirsson and Adolph Knopf editions, providing a guide and reference that explains how rocks occur, their commercial usage, and how to identify them through macroscopic, handspecimen features. Gives complete coverage of rock-forming minerals, rocks and man-made, rock-like materials, as well as meteorites, impactites, grossans, and more. Tables are provided for identifications based on megascopic examinations and simple field tests that require no sophisticated laboratory equipment. Plus, numerous illustrations represent rocks and rock-forming minerals as they appear in nature.