Improv Nation: How We Made a Great American Art

**A Finalist for the 2017** **George Freedley Memorial Award** **"With *Saturday Night Live* looming ever larger in the pop culture landscape, it's time for a history of improv comedy. Wasson delivers, moving nimbly from improv's origins in 1950s Chicago to movies like *Caddyshack* and TV shows like *The Colbert Report." -Entertainment Weekly* "A compelling, absolutely unputdownable story . . . And, in case you're wondering, yes, the book is funny. In places, very funny. A remarkable story, magnificently told." *-Booklist*** **From the best-selling author of *Fosse,* a sweeping yet intimate-and often hilarious-history of a uniquely American art form that has never been more popular.** 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.