Much like its subject, Sullivan's Rats refuses to be boxed into a single category, preferring to dart back and forth between microhistory, natural history, and personal essay in a charmingly discursive loop.

Sullivan's investigations into New York's least-loved inhabitants is part curiosity (an investigation into an Audubon painting of rats uncovers the artist's rat-hunting habits and spurs the author's own quest) and part opportunity (when in NYC...), and the desultory tone of this brief exploration (it tops out at 219 pages before endnotes) never really manages to impute any greater meaning to the venture than that, despite some half-hearted attempts to link the natures and fates of rats and men. Still, Rats is full of fascinating trivia and historical anecdote (rat fighting! Japanese bioweapons! the post 9/11 battle against rats!), if not a depth of scientific information regarding Rattus norvegicus.

Sullivan isn't a naturalist, and readers looking for a deep exploration of the biology and habits of rodentia should take a hard pass on Rats, which they would likely find frustratingly incomplete. As a tourguide, however, Sullivan excels, leading the reader through the maze of New York's neighborhoods and introducing their rodent inhabitants, contextualizing each with small bits of history. Should you choose to take the author's bait, Rats offers an entertaining look at ourselves and our rodent neighbors.

why do i love these guys

I thought the book was very intriguing overall all and had a lot of interesting information on many different types of rats. I liked the book because I learned a lot about rats and there nature and how they connect with humans. Although some of the information may have been a little misleading I still very much liked the book overall, and would enjoy reading more of the author's books in the future.

The author did a good job of making a book about rats interesting, but giving this read 2 stars since it turns out reading about rodents isn’t my cup of tea. The book talks about exterminators, city rats, plagues, etc. Not a bad read but wouldn’t recommend (unless maybe you live in NYC).

I was disappointed in this book. If you're looking for a book about rats, this isn't it. In fact it's a little bit, what's the word... Schizophrenic? It's the story of a forgotten back alley in New York City, the story of a forgotten battle at the beginning of the American Revolution, the story of a forgotten organizer for better housing, a history of pest control and a look at the pest control industry and a nature treatise that is less about nature and more about flowery language and quotes by Emerson and Thoreau.

The author spends a lot of time bragging (At least it felt that way to me) about spending a year observing rats in an alley, but honestly most of the book isn't really about his observations. It's about everyone else's and the way that rats have abstractly influenced things. The scientist in me got excited when the early chapters mention rat kings, and how there can be masses of rats whose tails are tangled together. I was like "wow I want to know more about this." But that is the only time it is mentioned in the book. (Not even the chapter titled "Rat King") mentions it.

The most interesting sections didn't happen until toward the end of the book. They were the chapters covering the spread of the bubonic plague in the middle ages and the pest control measures that were taken after 9/11. The latter was particularly interesting because that's not something people really think about. But other than that, meh.

I think this book had potential and maybe a certain type of person would find this interesting, but for me, it was mostly fluff. I didn't learn very much from reading this book and I felt like it focused less on rats and more on other things. Perhaps I should check out the book the author mentions by the "rat expert." It might be a little less disappointing.

So what do you want to do for a year? If you answered "travel" or "go back to school" or "take long walks on the beach" or "sing karaoke and open beer bottles with my teeth" then you're not the author of this book. This dude decides to follow New York City rats around for a year...all four seasons.... in their habitat, write a diary, become one with the rat... HUZZAH, New York, HUZZAH! (oh ya, to get THAT reference you must get to the end of this book). Yes, I'm bragging. I got there.

Mr. Sullivan includes so much interesting stuff that I never knew I wanted to know about rats in this book -- it's highly educational and I'm not giving any spoilers about that (unless you're my poor friends who got to hear stuff like, "OMG, did you know rats do _____!") (bet you thought I'd trip up and tell you something, didn't you?). I love knowing rat-facts. The San Francisco Chinatown chapter was so very interesting too. I'm just chock full of teasers.

What was funny in a quirky-you're-weird way was when Mr. Sullivan waxed poetic and used fancy schmancy beautiful words to describe these plague spreading vermin. Even his pretty words couldn't suppress my gag reflex while I ate and read over my lunch breaks. That was challenging, but this book was worth the throat massage to relax those barf muscles.

I feel like I've been in a dark, dank stinky hole and now I've reached the end of the tunnel and have climbed out into the fresh sunshine. Thank you, Mrs. Sullivan, for sharing your man with the Rat King so that I could learn all these rat-facts.

It's not about rat ethology. It's a lite and discursive set of anecdotes about exterminators, plague, historical figures, and the author's observations of rats in an alley in the financial district. These musings would be a lot more compelling if more concise and accurate. A representative sentence is on page 5: "The average brown rat is large and stocky; it grows to be approximately sixteen inches long from its nose to its tail--the size of a large adult human male's foot--and weighs about a pound, though brown rats have been measured by scientists and exterminators at twenty inches and up to two pounds."

I found this book both frustrating and pointless. While there were a handful of interesting factoids and anecdotes, I learned next to nothing about rats. About half of the book is him saying "I was getting ready to go look at rats" and the last half is his extremely superficial observations of rats in an alley. (They like to eat! They run along walls! He can maybe, MAYBE, recognize a single rat after months and months of observations!) There is a weird part where he gives up on any effort at narrative consistency and just includes a bullet point list of things he did once in Milwaukee. The flow is really disjointed. The worst part of this book, though, is the insufferably pretentious writing style of the author, which periodically builds to a fever pitch. At one point he offers what are purportedly excerpts from the diary he kept while sitting in the alley. Within one hour, he has quoted Confucius, Milton, and a Latin aphorism, all to make weak jokes about rats. It took a supreme effort of will to read past that section without my head exploding in incredulity. It's pretty obvious that the author has some weird inferiority complex regarding writing about such a "low" topic and that he's compensating with overblown efforts to show he's "above" his subject. There are even cringeworthy sections where he describes himself justifying writing the book to people at cocktail parties. Dude, if you don't think your subject is inherently worthy, DON'T WRITE THE BOOK! The rats deserve better. The cover is the best part about this book, so drink that in and then move on.

I'm tried, but just couldn't seem to get into this one. It didn't hold my attention like I thought it would. I skipped around, and didn't really go back to the parts I skipped over.

He does do a nice job of giving plenty of historic detail to NYC locations/people/events/institutions (including 9/11)--one thing I think my friend Michelle alluded to her review, but like her, I was left wanting on the rat behavior front. For us fieldworkers/natural historians, you gotta get in there with your subjects to really see what they are doing and why they are doing it! Even if it means going subterranean into a filthy underground tunnel system in gotham city...

I put this on my list because it was listed as a source in a book I enjoyed. This was an interesting study of rats in NY and also of below ground NY. The author spend a year watching rats in a certain alley. I liked it , but I'm not going to recommend it to anyone.

Absolutely MESMERIZING book about the human-rat relationship in the Big Apple. Sullivan knows precisely how to tie true history into his own lived experience, how to pull the reader down into the muck of the Financial District's back alleys. There's a beautiful joy present on every page. One of my favorite moments was when he attended a pest control conference to meet a famous rat expert and witnessed the absolute joy and excitement of other rat experts in hearing the man speak. What a niche. The book made me love the human spirit! Also, rats are one of the most underrated animals in the city and everyone who fears them (naturally so) should question where that fear comes from. They're fearsome but wondrous creatures!

I have two pet rats that I play with and watch endlessly, so I guess I could really identify with the author. They're such cunning, wily little guys. They were"rescued" from a feeder pet store for snake food. Although mine are the so-called "fancy" rats, one is brown and the other is black and look much more like common sewer rats.

That being said, I thought it was interesting how much rats have influenced and/or been part of the politics of NYC for many years.

Nice, easy read and not too science-y- almost more of an autobiography with rat info thrown in.