Book excerpt: This process-oriented book combines optical mineralogy with petrography and petrology. It covers all rock types. It focuses on the study of the behavior of rocks in response to geological processes. In addition to covering common igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks, it also examines weathered, hydrothermally altered, and low-temperature precipitative and deformed rocks. It covers all rock types that relate to the fields of hydrogeology, environmental geology, economic geology, neotectonics, earth science, seismology, and geologic engineering. Incorporates numerous high-quality photographs, including 8 pages of color photos.