�A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age � A New York Public Library Book to Remember from 2004 � A PSLA Young Adult Top 40 (or so) non-fiction title 2004
Love them or loathe them, rats are here to stay-they are city dwellers as much as (or more than) we are, surviving on the effluvia of our society. In Rats, the critically acclaimed bestseller, Robert Sullivan spends a year investigating a rat-infested alley just a few blocks away from Wall Street. Sullivan gets to know not just the beast but its friends and foes: the exterminators, the sanitation workers, the agitators and activists who have played their part in the centuries-old war between human city dweller and wild city rat. Sullivan looks deep into the largely unrecorded history of the city and its masses-its herds-of-rats-like mob. Funny, wise, sometimes disgusting but always compulsively readable, Rats earns its unlikely place alongside the great classics of nature writing.
Robert Sullivan is the author of The Meadowlands and A Whale Hunt, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year. He is a contributing editor to Vogue and a longtime contributor to the New Yorker. He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.
With an all-new Afterword by the author
A New York Times bestseller A Book Sense selection in hardcover A Book Sense bestseller A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller A NEBA, NCIBA, and PNBA bestseller
"Engaging...a lively, informative compendium of facts, theories, and musings."-Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"Immensely lively, enjoyable, learned, witty and yes, appealing."-Philip Lopate, Washington Post
"Sullivan's book is a rollicking, richly drawn history...[he] offers up a parade of eccentric characters who deserve to be in the movies."-Boston Globe
"Fascinating."-Vanity Fair
"Sullivan persuasively associates the 'truth' he learns about rats with a deeper understanding