A little context: Homo sapiens have been around for a few hundred thousand years. Insects? Four hundred million years. In this beautifully rendered, graphic-novel-style accounting of the natural history of bugs, artist Peter Kuper notes insects are perfectly happy without humans while humans without insects are toast. It’s an unsubtle reminder of who needs whom, but told with levity and wit. Dung beetles, you will be relieved to know, get special treatment, and there are cameos by Charles Darwin, Rachel Carson, and Osamu Tezuka, the father of Japanese manga, who was obsessed with bugs. If every book on science were this fun, informative, and engaging, there would be a lot more scientists. A dung beetle walks into a bar and asks, “Is this stool taken…”