This is the first comprehensive, fully-documented book on the geology, history, and lore of the gems and minerals of this war-ravaged crossroads between the Near East and the Far East.

• 110 photographs, maps and figures, including 52 in color

• History of geology and gem mining in Afghanistan, describing mining methods and production

• Detailed topographical and geological maps pinpoint gem and mineral deposits

• Over 1,400 gem and mineral locations by coordinates

• 2,000 years of geological, geographical and gemological exploration

• Over 500 references and suggested readings

• Color photographs of new cutting styles, carved gems and new jewelry designs

This EPUB format can be read by the Kobo eReader, Blackberry Playbook, Apple's iBooks app running on iOS devices such as the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, Barnes and Noble Nook, Sony Reader, BeBook, Bookeen Cybook Gen3 (with firmware v. 2 and up), COOL-ER, Lexcycle Stanza, BookGlutton, AZARDI, FBReader, Aldiko, Moon+ Reader and WordPlayer on Android, Freda on Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7, the Mozilla Firefox add-on EPUBReader, and Okular. Several other desktop reader software programs are currently implementing support for the format, such as dotReader, Mobipocket, uBook. We recommend the free EPUB reader, Calibre from http://calibre-ebook.com/