This book is good; however, the book is dangerous due to the fact that it will have you believe that you are now an expert in visual gem identification with a little practice and without the use of gemmological tools. False, The theme of the book is guesstimation, practice, light, eyes, and a specimen for identification. I truely do mean a lot of guesstimation to say the least. The book will give you a basic understanding of how to differentiate isotopic and birefringence gems when using visual methods. This is very useful when identifying real diamonds from synthetic moisanite. If you use visual identification (a.k.a the Hodgkinson method), back it up with some gemmological tools.
