Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants by robert sullivan

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

An entertaining book - gives interesting details about the history of New York, and a study of urban rats' behaviour. Although the title is Rats, Sullivan is using them as a basis for a wider picture of New York (and other parts of America), its history and its inhabitants. I already know a bit about domestic rats, and like them, so wasn't as surprised (or disturbed) as other people might be, and have probably taken a different view of Sullivan's findings from his studies and experiments.
While easy to read, I found this book badly written in some places, with facile descriptions of people and their conversations. The author also can't stop describing two of his friends as a poet and an artist which got right on my nerves.

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issayori

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

Other reviewers have complained that this book isn't so much about rats as it is about the city of New York itself, and that criticism is very true. This isn't so much about rats as a species, although it does comment a decent amount about their behavior, as it is about the people who deal with rats on a daily basis and how the rat lives alongside us. This is a history of sanitation workers, exterminators, and doctors and how each in turn respond to the invasion of the Norwegian Rat into their cities - this is how the rat is essentially a part of the city itself, a microcosm of human civilization through burrows and rat pits and the perceptions we all hold about the strange species.

Go into this book expecting social history more than commentary about rats. Go in expecting a history of extermination, complete with commentary about how it should, but isn't changing. Go in expecting a history of the lower echelon of society, how people live alongside rats, what it means, and how dealing with rats often forces us to deal with the less desirable aspects of our own society. Expect all of this written in a poetic language that wants to be Thoreau but never quite reaches that point. Nonetheless, it makes you think, and that's a good thing, isn't it?

I liked reading this book, although it wasn't quite what I was after. Once I settled in to accept it for what it was, however, I was pleasantly surprised. This is a good book that teaches us a different way of looking at things, and it is a book that accepts the rat for what it is: a rat. It doesn't put other expectations upon or it dress it up in hyperbole. This book respects them for what they are, praises them for what they excel at, an marvels at their survival and adaptability. Nevertheless, this book still acknowledges the harm they can do, but does so without prejudice and explains why it is they often do what they do.

We can learn a lot from rats when we stop to think about them, and this book encourages us to do just that.

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BigJim4652

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

My second book by Robert Sullivan. (Both were gifts from a dear friend with impeccable taste… obviously!)

He has his (unique) lane and knows how to spin a completely interesting and strange and intriguing yarn you didn’t think you’d want to read but totally glad you did afterwards. (And I found myself quoting from his book all the time with all the trivia and tidbits I picked up.)

How many people can pull off the trick of discussing an exterminator conference which dovetails into early American history revolving around once-important figures most of us never heard of before and then right back to ‘The Rat King’ and then a detour about 9/11?

(Is it asking too much for Sullivan to team up with Mary Roach because THAT will be the most oddball and amazing book ever written, for sure.)

“’It’s a very interesting world, isn’t it, the lower echelon?’”

“Las ratas, son el pan nuestro de cada dia”

“But mate these rats did, and repeatedly, which is a thing about male rates – they have been known to mate with a female rate long after she is interested in mating, sometimes after the female is dead.”

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bosveeer

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

There are rats in my apartment. I see them all the time, both night and day. While working with my computer, they would climb in the nearby pile of books. Sometimes a big one would pass right in front of me at my table, perhaps unaware that I'm just there right in front of him. So I read this book.

It's not so much about rats, however, than about people who had been, or are, involved with rats. And since rats are known carriers of diseases, plagues were also discussed.

Rats, the book said, have , the fear of the new. So what I did when I bought a rat trap [the kind that imprisons a rat uninjured:] was to place it first in one corner for many days, often putting food outside of it. The trick is to remove its newness to the rat. After that, I set it up, put freshly cooked peanuts inside and, bingo, got a very large black rat. Method of execution: pour boiling water upon the shrieking creature while trapped inside the cage.

Rats' most favorite garbage food according to the book[the first one being the most favorite:]: scrambled eggs, macaroni and cheese, cooked corn kernels, cooked potatoes, cooked oatmeal, cooked sweet potatoes, white bread, raw corn on the cob, raw beef with bones, raw sweet potatoes, raw beef without bones, corned beef hash, fried chicken, bananas, cooked carrots. Of course, the book discussed rats in New York. So these are New York garbage food. Here in my place, the rats loved peanuts and peanut butter [cheese too!:].

Two times already, rats were trapped inside a pail half-filled with water. I left them to drown. Do you know they can last for more than two days swimming in the pail before finally drowning? The book did not mention this, so it got only 3 stars from me.

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c0c0c0

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

This book was -- and I am choosing this word carefully, given the title -- delightful. Yes, it's about rats, and not cute rats that become pets. Robert Sullivan writes about the big brown rats with scary teeth that live in the alleys and sewers and garbage of New York City. It is spectacularly interesting, sometimes very funny, and, at times, deeply moving.

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misthistoric

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

I really enjoyed this book. Its a book about rats, but its also a book about New York, exterminators, and all these historical figures that Robert Sullivan connects to the story of rats. I loved his writing style, it read like a light conversation and included some great tangents that somehow always made it back to the topic of rats. The transparency of how strange this whole project was for him was matched with this notion that we are similar to rats in so many ways- and I thoroughly enjoyed this juxtaposition. I do want to check out more books by the author, but I think I've read enough about rats for this lifetime so I'm glad this is his only book on the subject.

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iamsherlocked93

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

This is a rambling and ultimately disappointing book. Rats as a microcosm of human history should make a fascinating study, but...they don't. At least, not here. The author seems unable to decide what his book is really about. Is it about his daily observations of rats in an alley in New York? Is it about New York City itself with rats as a vehicle and focal point? Is it about human history in relation to rats? The author jumps randomly between these lines of thought, giving none of them serious attention. One would think that any of these three subjects could fill 220 pages, but instead, the book contains lots of padding - completely unrelated blow-by-blow descriptions of Sullivan's jaunts to various marginally rat-related places and people.

An excerpt:
"I was able to stop in the middle of Union Station and lean back against a wall and watch people as they streamed in and out of train-track exits and entrances, in and out of exits to Chicago's streets, of the entrance and exits to a restaurant also marked with signs indicating areas for ordering food to go versus to stay. I smelled food. I grabbed some."

Pages of this stuff, going nowhere, like a poor travel-writer describing his vacation.

In addition, the author is at pains to tell us that he does not like rats and thinks they're disgusting. He exhibits a strange squeamishness, even after spending many hours watching rats. As someone who does feel a level of compassion and interest in rats as animals, I found his attitude tiresome. He seemed concerned that the audience might actually think he liked his subjects.

If you're interested in rats, give this book a miss. If you're interested in minutia about New York City, you might find some jumping off points for further research.

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-ice-chan-

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 26,2025

In this book are more facts about rats that you can poke at with a stick. There's some great anecdotes (historical and recent) as well as profiles of colorful people that travel in rattish circles.

Unfortunately, the author has a contrived overexcited attitude he goes on his rat-ventures and it makes the second half of the book a struggle. His observations devolve into a weird fake Victorian romantic praise for rat life (or the simpler life, channeling Thoreau). His writing is fragmented for this reason and for many strange associations that he makes. Sometimes, rats running around in an alley are just rats running around in an alley. I can be convinced if they are more than that, but I certainly wasn't by this book. Still worth picking up for all the rat-facts and especially for the gruesome chapter on rat fighting!

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Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants

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