show/hide this revision's text 1 [made Community Wiki]

As a very basic reference, you might enjoy the easy-to-read Arvanitoyeorgos' book (see Chapter 6 for symmetric spaces): An Introduction to Lie Groups and the Geometry of Homogeneous Spaces (Student Mathematical Library, V. 22). Another good introductory text is the Chapter XI of Kobayashi & Nomizu, Foundations of Differential Geometry, vol II. Of course more advanced references are the ones mentioned before: Helgason, Wolf, Loos etc.