In the second "Sapiens" volume, Yuval Noah Harari tells the story of how we took over the world; how an unlikely marriage between a god and a bureaucrat created the first empires; and how war, famine, disease, and inequality became a part of the human condition. The origins of modern farming are introduced through Elizabethan tragedy, the changing fortunes of domesticated plants and animals are tracked in the columns of the Daily Business News, and...

"Dr. Emeran Mayer, executive director of the Oppenheimer Center for Neurobiology of Stress and Resilience at UCLA, offers a cutting-edge view into this developing science, showing us the full impact and complexity of how the brain, but, and microbiome -- the community of microorganisms that lives inside the digestive tract -- communicate with one another... When this communication channel is out of whack, major health problems can crop up in both...