Improv Nation: How We Made a Great American Art

At the height of the McCarthy era, an experimental theater troupe set up shop in a bar near the University of Chicago. Via word-of-mouth, astonished crowds packed the ad-hoc venue to see its unscripted, interactive, consciousness-raising style. From this unlikely seed grew the Second City, the massively influential comedy theater troupe, and its offshoots-the Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, SNL, and a slew of others.



Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv in this richly reporte...