Reddit reviews Rare Earth Minerals: Chemistry, Origin and Ore Deposits (The Mineralogical Society Series (7))

"Extractive Metallurgy of the Rare Earths" by Gupta et al is essentially the textbook on it. Considering its publication date, its extremely thorough, but doesn't include some very important new developments in separation tek made in the last few years.

For the geology side, this book: http://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Minerals-Chemistry-Mineralogical/dp/0412610302 is excellent.

Its important to note that rare earth deposits are extremely variable. There are numerous types of deposits with different ore minerals in different geologic environments. They will all require special consideration and the mining and separation processes needs to be tailor-made to the specific deposit.

Let me know if you have more questions.

Source: I was the geologist at Mt. Pass until we went bankrupt.

The Mineralogical Society published a book called "Rare Earth Minerals: Chemistry, Origin, and Ore Deposits". I own it and like it, and it sounds closest to what you'd want. My only complaint is that, because each chapter is a paper by a different author, the book doesn't flow that well or build on concepts in a logical manner like most textbooks. However, its still loaded with useful information that any inspiring REE-geoscientist would want to have access to. I'm not sure a "textbook" style publication exists yet for the REE's. REE ore deposits are a very understudied field of ore deposits until recently. There is also "Extractive Metallurgy of the Rare Earths" (which I also own) which has a few great introduction chapters about rare earth chemistry, economics, and mining, but then in subsequent chapters jumps into really detailed metallurgical processes regarding the extraction and processing of rare earths that I am totally clueless on and have no interest in. I'd almost recommend it just for the first few chapters, but the book is pretty pricey.

Edit: Links: http://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Minerals-Chemistry-Mineralogical/dp/0412610302 http://www.amazon.com/Extractive-Metallurgy-Rare-Earths-Gupta/dp/0415333407/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332222202&sr=1-1

Edit: If you have any specific questions feel free to message me. I'm working on my masters studying REE ore deposits at the moment. I'm definitely not an expert on REE's (yet?), but I may be able to answer certain questions or forward them to someone who can.