Copyright © 2011 by Mark Kurlansky

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Published by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., New York

Excerpts from The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca reprinted by permission of New Directions
Publishing Corporation.

Excerpt from “Perfect Joy” by Thomas Merton, from The Way of Chuang Tzu, copyright ©1965 by the
Abbey of Gethsemani. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.

“Is There Any Easy Road to Freedom?” from The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg: Revised and
Expanded Edition, copyright ©1970, 1969 by Lilian Streichen Sandburg, trustee. Reprinted by permission
of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

Excerpt from “Ghetto” by Guy Tirolien in The Negritude Poets: An Anthology of Translations from the
French copyright © 1975 by Ellen Conroy Kennedy. Reproduced with permission of Ellen Conroy
Kennedy in the format tradebook via Copyright Clearance Center.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Kurlansky, Mark.
What? : are these the twenty most important questions in human history, or, is this a game of twenty
questions? / Mark Kurlansky.—1st U.S. ed.
    p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-8027-7906-9(hard cover)
1. Philosophy—Miscellanea. I. Title.
BD31.K87 2011
100—dc22
2010036450

First published in the U.S. by Walker Publishing Company in 2008
Published simultaneously in the United Kingdom by Orion with the title Other People’s Daughters
This e-book edition published in 2011

E-book ISBN: 978-0-8027-7967-0

Visit Walker & Company’s Web site at www.walkerbooks.com