This is the second of Tom Knauff's excellent texts for new soaring pilots, following Glider Basics from First Flight to Solo. He also has written Transition To Gliders for power pilots adding a glider rating.

Tom's writing style is clear and easy to understand. His books are well organized and very complete, yet not too wordy. He gets to the point without making your read through a lot of fluff. Tom writes as an authority in the field with many years of experience as an instructor with a superlative safety record, as a first class competition pilot, and as holder of several world soaring records. for these reasons, Tom's works have been widely adopted as standard texts for new and transitioning glider pilots in the United States.

The chapter list for this book is:

1. How A Glider Flies -- A Review
2. More About Landings
3. Steep Turns
4. Flight at Critically Slow Speeds
5. Stalls
6. Spins
7. Spiral Dive
8. The Benign Spiral Mode
9. Unassisted Takeoffs
10. Crosswind Takeoffs
11. Signals on Aerotow
12. Boxing the Prop Wash
13. More About Thermaling
14. Ridge Soaring
15. Wave Soaring
16. Speed to Fly
17. Instrumentation
18. Weight and Balance Calculations
19. The Loading Chart
20. Glider Aerobatics
21. Off Field Landings
22. Flying A New Type of Glider
23. Emergency Procedures
24. The Bronze Badge
25. The Flight Test

This is an excellent second text for new soaring pilots, taking them from their first solo flight to their Private Pilot glider rating. It's a thorough and complete treatment of the subject, in keeping with the high standards Knauff has set for glider pilot instruction. The text contains numerous references to the works of other authors like Piggott, Welch, Reichmann and Langeweishe for more advanced reading.