The book is divided into four sections, minerals, crystals, rocks and ores. Section A incorporates nine s, begins with presenting salient features of the earth--its structure and composition. The second Minerals and Mineralogy briefly tells about their diversity and their categorisation and introduces the interesting way they are named. Crystal chemistry the third is the heart and soul of mineralogy and deals in somewhat details about the building blocks of minerals -atoms and ions and the way they form diverse types of minerals are. It tries to tell why every combination of chemical compounds cannot result into a naturally occurring mineral. The fourth and fifth s deal with Properties of Minerals, physical and optical. The s describe various physical properties that are helpful in the identification both in hand specimens and as thin section under the microscope. These two s are adequately aided with a number of illustrations, photographs and photomicrographs to bring home the point.