The extraordinary story of a young man’s plunge into the unique and wonderful world of the circus-taking readers deep into circus history and its renaissance as a contemporary art form, and behind the (tented) walls of France’s most prestigious circus school.

When Duncan Wall visited his first nouveau cirque as a college student in Paris, everything about it-the monochromatic costumes, the acrobat singing Simon and Garfunkel, the juggler reciting Proust-was captivating. Soon he was waiting outside stage doors, eagerly chatting with the stars, and attending circuses two or three nights a week. So great was his enthusiasm that a year later he applied on a whim to the training program at the cole Nationale des Arts du Cirque-and was, to his surprise, accepted.

Sometimes scary and often funny, The Ordinary Acrobat follows the (occasionally literal) collision of one American novice and a host of gifted international students in a rigorous regimen of tumbling, trapeze, juggling, and clowning. Along the way, Wall introduces readers to all the ambition, beauty, and thrills of the circus’s long history- from hardscrabble beginnings to Gilded Age treasures, and from twentieth-century artistic and economic struggles to its brilliant reemergence in the form of contemporary circus (most prominently through Cirque du Soleil). Readers meet figures past-the father of the circus, Philip Astley; the larger-than-life P. T. Barnum-and present, as Wall seeks lessons from innovative masters including juggler Jer me Thomas and clown Andre Riot-Sarcey. As Wall learns, not everyone is destined to run away with the circus-but the institution fascinates just the same.

Brimming with surprises, outsized personalities, and plenty of charm, The Ordinary Acrobat delivers all the excitement and pleasure of the circus ring itself.