Assouline is famous for creating luxury books featuring fashion designers, jewelry designers, pop culture icons, etc. They are the perfect publisher for creating a book with Judith Ripka. Contrary to the product description, this is a huge hardcover book that measures about 9 3/4" by 13" and has 232 pages. Considering how the backlist for Assouline has increased in price (the Chanel boxed set of three 80 page books first published in 2003 will now cost $50 more), the price for the Ripka book is well worth it.

Judith Ripka designed her first 18 carat gold collection in 1977 and now has stores across the country, as well as a sterling silver line on QVC. She brought her family into the business and enjoyed watching celebrities like Oprah using her jewelry in Oprah's Favorite Things. Her fans range from Miley Cyrus, to Kate Hudson to Hillary Clinton to thousands of QVC shoppers.

So let's talk about the book. It is huge and displays a lot of jewelry - usually one item to a page. When a page is devoted to text, the font is so large that only two paragraphs usually fit on a page. A lot of pages have quotes from Judith and a piece of her stunning jewelry.

The bottom line is if you love and collect Judith Ripka jewelry, you will want this book.

If you were looking for something with a deeper history of jewelry over the past four decades, try Robert Lee Morris' The Power of Jewelry. RLM not only discusses his jewelry, but provides a fashion and jewelry history from the catwalk to the jewelry stores that sold his designs.