What Is Man‪?‬

Locked in his desk for 25 years, this was Twain's most serious, philosophical, and private work. What Is Man? appears in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a romantic young idealist and an elderly cynic, who debate issues of mankind, such as whether man is free to act or is more of a machine, whether personal merit is meaningless given how the environment shapes us, and whether man truly has impulses other than to pursue pleasure and avoid pain. Colorful, irreverent, romantic, skeptical, a master of comic asides, a bittersweet humorist, and an unflinching critic of human affection, Mark Twain speaks to us across time with verve and wisdom.

Read by Carl Reiner, comedy legend and recipient of the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.