Some animals are more equal than others

Here are two parallel books, both by Americans, both 260 pages (excluding indexes) long, both using ‘likely’ as an adverb. One looks at the history of the world through the story of the chicken; the other does the same through the story of the pig. Which would you prefer? I found the chicken one harder going — like ploughing through one of those brilliant but exhausting New Yorker articles that never seem to end, for which the journalist with too generous a budget has spent years interviewing hyper-specialist scientists in labs and ‘facilities’ across the USA — but I found the pig one sadder. There’s an illustration I had to cover up while reading page 174: of a pig being hauled onto a huge wheel, looking terrified, about to have its throat slit as part of an early pork-production line in 19th-century Chicago.

In the chicken book, you know that every chapter opening — whether it’s about the ancient city of Ur or a Greek vase — will lead up to the word ‘rooster’.