Sapiens: A Graphic History, Volume 2: The Pillars of Civilization

Sapiens: A Graphic History, Volume 2: The Pillars of Civilization continues the full-colour graphic adaptation of Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, co-written with David Vandermeulen and illustrated by Daniel Casanave.

This instalment is about the Agricultural Revolution and what it cost. It follows how wheat came to dominate the planet, how an unlikely partnership between a god and a bureaucrat produced the first empires, and how war, plague, famine and inequality settled in as permanent conditions rather than passing misfortunes.

The storytelling keeps shifting form: the origins of farming are staged as Elizabethan drama, and the changing fortunes of domesticated species are reported as business journalism. Thomas Jefferson, Margaret Thatcher and John Lennon appear as guest stars, while the volume presses the question of whether humanity walked into a trap 12,000 years ago that it has never found a way out of.

It can be read on its own or in sequence after Volume 1.