Anderson, whose engineering and other scholarly credits include a chair at the National Air and Space Museum, as well as faculty positions in both history and aeronautical engineering at the University of Maryland, intended this text for a first course in airplane performance. As such it covers design philosophy and methodology in order to show how working engineers achieve their performance standards. Part I is an overview of aerodynamics and propulsion. Part II covers static and accelerated aircraft performance and equations of motion, and part III describes design methodologies using historical examples.