Bryan Devine's List: Reading Strategies

• technology is increasing demand for books whether on digital devices or through the ease of buying books online.  Enhanced e-books are only in their infancy, allowing authors to add alternative endings or interviews.  Down the road, who knows what’s possible?  Maybe we will have biometric devices that can sense your pulse and body temperature and change the plot based on your feelings — and you think Stephen King is scary now.  Third, the very definition of a book is evolving.  The information in books is fast becoming linked to other content in various forms, blending into articles, research, and other media. 
• Three powerful trends in the last few years have been the growth of online retail, the rise of the e-book, and the explosion in the number of titles available.  These will continue for some time.  It doesn’t mean that all bookstores will close.  And it doesn’t mean that the printed book is dead. 
• Books educate, inform and inspire. They cultivate curiosity, nurture the imagination, and promote a sense of wonder.  Books are also terrific conversation starters. In addition, books keep on giving well beyond the day they are received whether to the original recipient or to someone else.

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• Planning

   

  He was
• The "artistic crime of the century" took six years of planning, during which Petit learned everything he could about the buildings, taking into account such problems as the swaying of the towers because of wind, and how to rig the steel cable across the 200 ft (61 m) gap between the towers
• Petit snuck into the towers several times, hiding on the roof and other areas in the unfinished towers, in order to get a sense of what type of security measures were in place. Using his own observations and Moore's photographs, Petit was able to make a scale model of the towers to help him design the rigging he needed to prepare for the wirewalk. He made fake identification cards for himself and his collaborators
• He walked the wire for 45 minutes, making eight crossings between the towers, a quarter mile above the sidewalks of Manhattan. In addition to walking, he sat on the wire, gave knee salutes and, while lying on the wire, spoke with a gull circling above his head.

• As soon as Petit was observed by witnesses on the ground, the Port Authority Police Department dispatched officers to take him into custody. One of the officers, Sgt. Charles Daniels, later reported his experience:

   

   

  I observed the tightrope 'dancer'—because you couldn't call him a 'walker'—approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire....And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle....He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again....Unbelievable really....Everybody was spellbound in the watching of it.^[7]
• Petit was warned by his friend on the South Tower that a police helicopter would come to pick him off the wire unless he got off. Rain had begun to fall, and Petit decided he had taken enough risks, so he decided to give himself up to the police waiting for him on the South Tower. He was arrested once he stepped off the wire. Provoked by his taunting behaviour while on the wire, police handcuffed him behind his back and roughly pushed him down a flight of stairs. This he later described as the most dangerous part of the stunt.
• The extensive news coverage and public appreciation of Petit's high-wire walk resulted in all formal charges relating to his walk being dropped^[10] in exchange for what was supposed to be a free show of juggling for a few children in Central Park.
• Petit was also presented with a lifetime pass to the Twin Towers' Observation Deck by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He autographed a steel beam close to the point where he began his walk.
• Petit briefly headlined with the Ringling Brothers' Circus, but circus life did not agree with him. It was during his stint with the circus that he suffered his only fall, from 45 feet (≈ 14 meters) during a practice walk, breaking several ribs. He says he has never fallen during a performance. "If I had, I wouldn't be here."^[14]

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