In the vein of The Creative Habit and The Artist’s Way, a new manifesto on the creative process from a master of the impossible. Since well before his epic 1974 walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, Philippe Petit had become an artist who answered first and foremost to the demands of his craft—not only on the high wire, but also as a magician, street juggler, visual artist, builder, and writer. A born rebel like many creative people, he was from an early age a voracious learner who taught himself, cultivating the attitudes, resources, and techniques to tackle even seemingly impossible feats. His outlaw sensibility spawned a unique approach to the creative process—an approach he shares, with characteristic enthusiasm, irreverence, and originality in Creativity: The Perfect Crime.            Making the reader his accomplice, Petit reveals new and unconventional ways of going about the artistic endeavor, from generating and shaping ideas to practicing and problem-solving to pulling off the “coup” itself—executing a finished work. The strategies and insights he shares will resonate with performers of every stripe (actors, musicians, dancers) and practitioners of the non-performing arts (painters, writers, sculptors), and also with ordinary mortals in search of fresh ways of tackling the challenges and possibilities of everyday existence.

Product Description: On August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between the New York World Trade Center’s twin towers, where he performed for nearly an hour. The death-defiying event has been the subect of two major films, the documentary Man on Wire (2008) and The Walk (2015) staring Joseph Gordon-Levitt...read more

A high-wire artist traces his six years of planning and training to walk a wire between the towers of the nearly completed World Trade Center in 1974 and describes the history-making realization of his goal eight times in the course of an hour. (view table of contents)

Product Description: In 1974, a young Frenchman secretly - and illegally - rigged a tightrope between the Twin Towers. He made eight corssings in an hour, while 100,000 people watched in the streets of New York. In "To Reach The Clouds", Petit recreates his six-and-a-half-year quest to realize his dream...read more

Product Description: Exhilarating, emotional, and extremely absorbing, this memoir tells the story of French acrobat and high-wire artist Philippe Petit who, on a day in 1974, illegally rigged a cable between the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center and walked between them without a net, making eight crossings in all...read more

Product Description: May '68 in France expressed a fundamental version of freedom: not freedom to succeed, but freedom to revolt. Political revolutions ultimately betray revolt because they cease to question themselves. Revolt, as I understand it -- psychic revolt, analytic revolt, artistic revolt -- refers to a permanent state of questioning, of transformations, an endless probing of appearances...read more

Discusses the techniques of tightrope walking and portrays how it feels to be a tightrope walker