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    Cheating The Impossible: Ideas and Recipes from a Rebellious High-Wire Artist
Philippe Petit
On August 7th, 1974, shortly after the World Trade Center was erected, French high-wire artist Philippe Petit stood in front of the impossible and took it full stride as he walked 200 feet between the Twin Towers, 1,368 feet above ground, on a 55-pound balancing rope. Dubbed “the artistic crime of the century,” the feat took six years of planning. Petit — who never finished formal education — had to acquaint himself with the most esoteric details of engineering, architecture, and the physics of wind, among other preemptive intricacies. At long last, Petit tells his story of autodidactic learning and creative ingenuity in a broader context of how to live life with “patience and tenacity” in an age of silver bullets and shortcuts.

    Cheating The Impossible: Ideas and Recipes from a Rebellious High-Wire Artist

    Philippe Petit

    On August 7th, 1974, shortly after the World Trade Center was erected, French high-wire artist Philippe Petit stood in front of the impossible and took it full stride as he walked 200 feet between the Twin Towers, 1,368 feet above ground, on a 55-pound balancing rope. Dubbed “the artistic crime of the century,” the feat took six years of planning. Petit — who never finished formal education — had to acquaint himself with the most esoteric details of engineering, architecture, and the physics of wind, among other preemptive intricacies. At long last, Petit tells his story of autodidactic learning and creative ingenuity in a broader context of how to live life with “patience and tenacity” in an age of silver bullets and shortcuts.

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