The Art and Science of Sails Hardcover – October 1, 2016

Son in law recovering from surgery said book was helpful and instructional! Had very high rating and is excellent!

This is an outstanding book! If you want a great explanation of why old theories of aerodynamics are false, and a better explanation of circulation theory, you'll get it here. This book is not for the beginner or the faint of heart; you'll want to pay attention and read several of the chapters a few times. After the book explains a little history, it dives into the theory behind sails. Then sail design considerations and then finally sail trim are discussed. Others here have pointed out that the book is a commercial for North. Well, there is one chapter dedicated to that. You could make a good argument that, since the authors are North people, they are writing about what they know. Most of the book by far is applicable to all sails, even though they do discuss 3Di attimes. I learned a lot from this book an I'll be a better sail trimmer for reading it. Also, it has beautiful pictures.

This book answered so many lingering questions that I had about the finer aerodynamic details behind sails. It’s totally worth the price and covers the science in a more clear and direct way than other common sailing books.

I'm thoroughly enjoying reading this book. The authors make what could have been a technical book a most interesting read. I've learned a lot about materials, design and construction of sails. Makes me appreciate what went into the great sails I've bought from North Sails.

Really like the aerodynamics portion of the book. Author needs to define some of the terms.

The book has many nice pictures and graphs, but this is not a table top book. The art has moved to the science. The author in his writing has obsoleted all of the sail trim books in my sailing library.

Have to agree with the other 1 star review. If given the opportunity to re-title this book, I would call it "the marketing and engineering of sails."Regarding the "marketing," the new text in this revision is pretty much all there as a plug for North's 3Dx laminate sails. They mention their own trademarked products by name repeatedly and fail to acknowledge that the IP surrounding these technologies is now fairly widespread among manufacturers (the original patents have now expired). Also included is a rewrite of the history of laminate sails. The narrative they present was finely honed for a semi-notorious intellectual property lawsuit that they ultimately lost. So is their version really the truth? Usually the truth is somewhere in the middle, yet the court's decision has to be binary. However including these sections with only a North bias is clearly a marketing and image decision and fairly disappointing to any reader who paid any attention to the issue.Why "engineering" and not "science?" I'll paraphrase the first sentence in just about any undergraduate's first text on finite element analysis (FEA): "...FEA is a tool that make a bad engineer dangerous..." The book is resplendent with lovely CFD/FEA images of pressure distributions on sails. Nowhere do the authors discuss the boundary conditions or assumptions in fluid flow. Nowhere to they discuss sources of error in modeling. The achievement of commercially available CFD and FEA software is that it can solve basic physics on very fine scales across complex geometry when certain simplifying assumptions are made. So, maybe better than a guy making guesses in a sail loft, but maybe not if it's really just another guy making guesses in front of his computer. If one were to write a text on modern sail design, one would also discuss the limitations. In a science, you would generate a hypothosis, test it and discuss the results. You could optimize a sail via some model (hypothesis) instrument it with arrays of pressure sensors and strain gauges, and bounce lasers off of it to measure the change in shape caused by stress in the material. You would then discuss where the model fails. It is in this (hypothetical) discussion that the reader would actually learn something about the state of the art in sail design.From reading the text in this book I have understood that North has bought some software and has used it. They are also capable of summarizing Gentry's original articles published in the '70's. Save your money.