This book presents a guide of optical mineralogy for beginners and microscopists who need to brush up their knowledge. It allows the fast identification of common rock-forming minerals in a thin section using a polarized light microscope and transmitted plane and cross polarized light. The book summarizes essential principles of optical mineralogy in numerous schemes. It explains, with the aid of more than 1000 microscopic images, how to determine the diagnostic optical characteristics of a mineral in a thin section. Seventy-two mineral plates of sixty-five common rock-forming minerals...