George Hammond developed his passion for wisdom over many decades, starting with Pythagoras’s observations of inherent patterns in reality and Plato’s insight that focusing on clarifying your first principles first would make philosophical inquiries far more effective.

George is a popular lecturer at The Commonwealth Club and at Humanities West programs in San Francisco, and is the author of six philosophical books (Rational Idealism, Conversations With Socrates, The Gospel According to Andrew, Even More Relativity, Innocence Abroad and Fragments), four novels (The Senior Partner, Bob and Charlie, The Morning Light and The Nuclear Conspiracy), and a collection of short stories (Mark Twain’s Visit to Heaven And Other Short Stories).

George was an international mergers & acquisitions attorney at Dewey Ballantine and at LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae. He negotiated over 200 deals worth over $40 billion, including the Yukos-Sibneft oil company merger in Russia, the acquisition of Aoba Life Insurance in Japan by Artemis S.A., the Shenhua coal liquefaction project in Mongolia and the Mall of America in Minnesota. He was a member of the board of directors of the Pacific Stock Exchange during its mergers with Archipelago and the NYSE, and held a variety of jobs prior to finishing law school, including snow shoveler, paperboy, babysitter, camp counselor, busboy, department store clerk, railroad yardman, teacher, librarian’s assistant, temporary secretary and real estate analyst.

George is the 4th of the 12 children of Patricia and Eugene Hammond (who was the mayor of Kenosha, Wisconsin from 1958–67), and is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Wisconsin Law School.