Jonathan Moreno, University of Pennsylvania
"Impromptu Man"

Abstract:    Impromptu Man is the story of an unlikely combination of ideas that have helped shape our time. Seen through the colorful personality and long career of one of the 20th century’s great innovators, the psychiatrist and psychodrama founder J.L. Moreno, this epic history takes the reader from the creative chaos of Habsburg Vienna to the wired world of Silicon Valley. Impromptu Man is also a personal journey of discovery about the author’s father, who he only knew as an old man who watched as his profound insights were pulled apart and absorbed by the culture, ideas that have been richly vindicated in the 40 years since his death.