"It is [a] belief in diversity and pluralism and the uniqueness of each person that underlies all my writings . . . " -from the Preface. Regarded as the most influential and widely read thinker on modern organizations and their management, Peter Drucker has also established himself as an unorthodox and independent analyst of politics, the economy, and society. A man of impressive scope and expertise, he has paved significant inroads in a number of key areas, sharing his knowledge and keen insight on everything from the plight of the employee and the effects of technology to the vicissitudes of the markets and the future of the new world order. Adventures of a Bystander is Drucker's rich collection of autobiographical stories and vignettes, in which this legendary figure paints a portrait of his remarkable life, and of the larger historical realities of his time. In a style that is both unique and engaging, Drucker conveys his life story -from his early teen years in Vienna through the interwar years in Europe, the New Deal era, World War II, and the postwar period in America-through intimate profiles of a host of fascinating people he's known through the years. Their personal histories are, as Drucker tells us, the beads for which his own life serves as the string. A colorful group, these diverse, often unpredictable, always multidimensional individuals were chosen "because each of them, in his or her own highly personal way, reflects and refracts the thirty crucial years from the end of World War I to the first post-World War II decade-the thirty years that largely formed the world in which we now live." An amazing pageant of characters, both famous and otherwise, springs from these pages, illuminating and defining one of the most tumultuous periods in world history. Along with bankers and courtesans, artists, aristocrats, prophets, and empire-builders, we meet members of Drucker's own family and close circle of friends, among them such prominent figures as Sigmund Freud, Henry Luce, Alfred Sloan, John Lewis, and Buckminster Fuller. Playing to perfection their roles as those who "reflect and refract" the customs, beliefs, and attitudes of the times, these singular personalities lend Adventures of a Bystander a striking "you-are-there" feel. A brief encounter with Freud becomes the catalyst for an absorbing, multidimensional description of the economics, politics, and social psychology of pre-World War II Europe. Drucker introduces us to Fritz Kraemer, a brilliant, monocle-wearing eccentric who became an influential mentor to the young Henry Kissinger. His personal memoir of Henry Luce documents the development of modern journalism, while in "The Indian Summer of Innocence," he rescues and preserves the very heart of the American experience during the last New Deal years before World War II. Shedding light on a turbulent and important era, Adventures of a Bystander also reflects Peter Drucker himself as a man of imaginative sympathy and enormous interest in people, ideas, and history. These enthralling stories complement and complete the groundbreaking analytical writing for which he is so revered. Luminous autobiographical stories by one of the greatest thinkers of our time "The cast of characters among whom Drucker moves is superbly rich, and the informed glimpse he provides of a vanished social and political universe is an education in itself. Adventures of a Bystander is better than a novel, more lively than an essay, and as thoughtful as both at their best." -The Harvard Business Review. "Adventures of a Bystander is a virtuoso performance in which Drucker displays a dazzling diversity of personal interests and knowledge, an awesome power of recall, and a crisp, highly readable writing style." -BusinessWeek. "Adventures of a Bystander appears in a stroke to have restored the art of the memoir and of the essay. It will doubtless be a while before its like comes round again." -The Washington Post.

""Impromptu Man captures the remarkable impact of a singular genius, J.L. Moreno, whose creations-the best-known being psychodrama-have shaped our culture in myriad ways, many unrecognized. The record will be set straight for all time by this can't-put-down biography, a tribute by Jonathan D. Moreno to his father's masterly legacy." -DANIEL GOLEMAN, author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ J.L. Moreno (1889-1974), the father of psychodrama, was an early critic of Sigmund Freud, wrote landmark works of Viennese expressionism, founded an experimental theater where he discovered Peter Lorre, influenced Martin Buber, and became one of the most important psychiatrists and social scientists of his time. ?? A mystic, theater impresario and inventor in his youth, Moreno immigrated to America in 1926, where he trained famous actors, introduced group therapy, and was a forerunner of humanistic psychology. As a social reformer, he reorganized schools and prisons, and designed New Deal planned communities for workers and farmers. Moreno's methods have been adopted by improvisational theater groups, military organizations, educators, business leaders, and trial lawyers. His studies of social networks laid the groundwork for social media like Twitter and Facebook. ?? Featuring interviews with Clay Shirky, Gloria Steinem, and Werner Erhard, among others, original documentary research, and the author's own perspective growing up as the son of an innovative genius, Impromptu Man is both the study of a great and largely unsung figure of the last century and an epic history, taking readers from the creative chaos of early twentieth-century Vienna to the wired world of Silicon Valley. Jonathan D. Moreno, called the "most interesting bioethicist of our time" by the American Journal of Bioethics, is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. "--

*Winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Biography and Autobiography This is the story of the making of a world-famous sociologist. It is even more the story of a boy hustling to survive. Here in an astonishing and candidly written memoir by one of America's premier social scientists recounting the intensely personal story of his tormented youth in a ghetto within a ghetto. It etches the painful details of a boy's overcoming alienation and isolation in a hostile place in an unloving family. In the 1930s a small remnant community of Eastern European Jewish immigrants still resided in predominantly black Harlem. As shopkeepers trying to make out a marginal existence, Harlem's Jews were a minority within a minority. Into this restricted world the author of this book was born. Irving Louis Horowitz's parents had fled Russia, his father the victim of persecution in the Tsarist army during World War I. The boy's schoolmates were the children of black sharecroppers who had immigrated to the North. Poverty, language, and culture all cut off the Horowitz family from traditional community life, and the stress of a survival existence led to the trauma of a deteriorating family unit. Harlem and its environs, the Apollo and the Alhambra theaters, the Polo Grounds, and Central Park were the stage on which a youngster from this ghetto built a kind of self-reliance at the cost of social graces. The recipient of the National Jewish Book Award for Biography and Autobiography, this new, augmented edition contains the author's reflection of the impact of the Great Depression on Harlem family life.

In 1921, when he was 11 years old, Anatol Rapoport attempted to ice skate out of Russia to freedom in Poland. Caught by border guards and turned back, he decided to try again with the help of professional Army smugglers. This bittersweet story of emigration, by the famed psychologist and mathematician known for his work in game theory, is set against the background of the Russian revolution and civil war. Poignant accounts of life in the Ukraine and Crimea, stories of Red and White Army soldiers bivouacking in his home, and a 200-mile train ride that takes 13 days in the comfort of a boxcar make this Canadian/American author's story unforgettable.