George Hammond, Author, Mark Twain’s Visit to Heaven Monday Night Philosophy finds the fun in Mark Twain’s almighty fight for free will. Taking issue with analysts who believe that Mark Twain became a pessimist in old age due to his many personal tragedies, and finding the cracks of freedom in Mark Twain’s own deterministic conclusions about the “damned human race” in “What is Man?”, George will focus on the consistent, and consistently humorous, though sometimes painful and angry, philosophical fight Mark Twain waged from his youth to his dying breath against the stultifying fears and clearly false ideas about life that keep our otherwise free wills chained to “petrified opinion,” preventing us from dreaming “other dreams, and better.”