Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "ME-high CHICK-sent-me-high-ee") is a professor and former chairman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago who has devoted his life's work to the study of what makes people truly happy, satisfied, and fulfilled. Dr. Csikszentmihalyi is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Education and National Academy of Leisure Sciences. He has been a Senior Fulbright Fellow and currently sits on several boards, including the Board of Advisors for the Encyclopedia Britannica.

A great deal of interest in Mihaly's work has been building outside academia, spearheaded by substantial articles in Psychology Today, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Omni, Wired, Fast Company and Newsweek, and his appearances on foreign television networks such as the BBC and RAI (Italian television), and in several hour long segments of "Nova."

Flow was shown on the 1993 Super Bowl broadcast as the book that inspired Jimmy Johnson, then coach of the Dallas Cowboys. In the pages of Newsweek last fall, President Clinton named him one of his current favorite authors. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich put his work on the reading list for a political planning committee. And corporations and cultural institutions - from Volvo in Sweden to the Chicago Park District to the political leadership of Austria - have seized upon his ideas and how to apply them because his findings have much to offer anyone interested in improving his or her understanding of how people can perform optimally in every area of life.