Mineral Exploration and Mining Essentials Paperback – January 1, 2011

This is a great book if one wants to know the cycle of mineral and mining from the formation of minerals to mining and all the process in between. Definitely I would recommend the book to anyone who works in the mining industry and is not a geologist, or anyone who is interested in mining and geology. It is one of the few mining/geology books I have come across that are able to make the subject entertaining and interesting to read. I work in a mine. Mill plant and underground drilling areas as shown in the book because of safety reasons are off-limit to most people working at the mine too. It is great to able to see in photos. This book is very detailed in all phases of mineral exploration and yet very interesting to read. A must-have book if you are into the subject of geology/mining.

As someone with a financial background who is now working in the mining industry, I have found this book really helpful in terms of putting the technical aspects in context and allowing me to understand common concepts which are discussed.

Excellent!

I am a Mining Analyst and Financial Modeller. The strengths of this book for me are:(1) Strength in breadth with sufficient depth to whet the appetite to look elsewhere for greater depth(2) Clear explanation of the key geological deposit types in everyday language. This is important because highly technical language and overly nuanced interpretation is a feature of many geology texts which makes them far less readable for non-geologists.(3) The summaries of size and grade ranges of typical deposits is really useful and something I would have loved to have had starting out.(4) Straightforward explanations of Mining and Metallurgical processes.(5) Very good diagrams and photographs to illustrate key points with the diagrams and photos in colour close to the text to which they relate - good for visual learners.(6) A good summary of the right questions to ask as an investor.(7) Well edited with very few errors (although there is a bit of repetition).The areas where greater explanation would be useful include:(1) The text is very North American (even specifically Canadian) in emphasis and examples. Some greater discussion of other geological provinces and their similarities and differences would have been interesting (ie the Greenstone belts of W. Australia, West Africa and Guyana). In particular Africa and most of Oceania (Indonesia, PNG, Phillipines, Aus, NZ) get little or no mention. As an Australia I would say that, of course but it's a global business.(2) A chapter on financial analysis of mining projects would probably be useful to most investors - perhaps not the standard DCF spiel but more if it picked out some of the key project differentiating aspects and gave examples of the magnitude of their impact (pit slope / ore to waste / recovery etc)All in all it's clear the author was trying very hard to make the book accessible to non technical people and he's done a really good job of that. If a second edition incorporates the two items on my wish list the book will get my 5 stars.