In his third book, Robert Sullivan leaves the wilds of the (Meadowlands and the rough whaling waters of the Pacific Northwest to take up rat-watching in the alleys of New York City. Sullivan learned to appreciate the rodents during nocturnal stakeouts; a night-vision scope helped him observe rats without scaring them. As in his previous books, Sullivan uses pointillist details rather than broad portraiture to paint his subject, and the details in Rats are devilish. There are plenty of facts in the book to make your skin crawl, such as a description of the greasy skids rats leave on the paths they frequent, and a list of garbage items they prefer to eat. But Sullivan's style is often less that of a nature writer than a historian. In personable, essayish chapters, New York's history is revealed to be particularly ratty, with tall tales about the rodents' disgusting accomplishments going back to the city's founding. Although many people have never seen a rat outside a pet store, Sullivan reminds us that they are our constant neighbors, staring out from dim corners and messy crevices with beady eyes and twitching whiskers. --Adam Fisher


From Publishers Weekly
In this excellent narrative, Sullivan uses the brown rat as the vehicle for a labyrinthine history of the Big Apple. After pointing out a host of facts about rats that are sure to make you start itching ("if you are in New York... you are within close proximity to one or more rats having sex"), Sullivan quickly focuses in on the rat's seemingly inexhaustible number of connections to mankind. Observing a group of rats in a New York City alley, just blocks from a preâ€"September 11 World Trade Center, leads Sullivan into a timeless world that has more twists than Manhattan's rat-friendly underbelly. Conversations and field studies with "pest control technicians" spirit him back to 1960s Harlem, when rat infestations played a part in the Civil Rights movement and the creation of tenants' organizations. Researching the names of the streets and landmarks near the rats' homes, Sullivan is led even deeper into the city's history till he is back to the 19th century, when the real gangs of New York were the packs of rats that overran the city's bustling docks. Like any true New Yorker, Sullivan is able to convey simultaneously the feelings of disgust and awe that most city dwellers have for the scurrying masses that live among them. These feelings, coupled with his ability to literally and figuratively insert himself into the company of his hairy neighbors, help to personalize the myriad of topicsâ€"urban renewal, labor strikes, congressional bills, disease control, September 11-that rats have nosed their way into over the years. This book is a must pickup for every city dweller, even if you'll feel like you need to wash your hands when you put it down. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–Sullivan's narration reads like a monologue by a charming and witty party guest, albeit his topic is the city rat. No fact is too minute or detail too obscure. In his research, the author consulted many "rat experts," including a New York exterminator who shared the lower Manhattan alley that became the location for his observations. Tales of rats' run-ins with humans include a particularly disturbing one about a woman who was "attacked" by the rodents near his observation place. One chapter is dedicated to the Irish immigrant who hosted rat fights in his bar in the 1840s. Each of these tales is filled with digressions–the history of some of the buildings in the alley, the founding of the SPCA. The greatest digression occurs with regard to the World Trade Center catastrophe. Because Sullivan's alley was so close to the scene, his observations were necessarily interrupted, and when he returned, of course things had changed. But so singular is his vision that even this disaster is put into a rat context–how exterminators were on the job, how the subject of rats was unmentionable in discussions about disaster cleanup, even though his observations showed that rats were plentiful. This creative writer has taken on a seemingly unappealing subject and turned it into a top-notch page-turner.–Jamie Watson, Harford County Public Library, MD Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
In the highly readable bibliographic essay that Sullivan calls the notes to this book, he tips his hand about its slightly facetious tone by reprinting a rat-related entry he made to the New Yorker's mildly supercilious "Talk of the Town" feature. Like a typical bit of "Talk," the book never lets its ostensible subject divert too much attention from its author. Sullivan observing the rats in Edens Alley in old lower Manhattan during 2001 is precisely the focus, and not even the World Trade Center catastrophe mere blocks away distracts much from him in that alley. Actually, he gets away quite often, to glean the facts of rat control, sketch the history of rats worldwide but mainly in New York, discuss rat ecology, and resurrect forgotten rat-relevant New York characters like 1960s Harlem tenants' organizer Jesse Gray, nineteenth-century rat-fighting entrepreneur Kit Burns, and--stretching rat relevancy a bit--American revolutionary rabble-rouser Isaac Sears. So it just seems like it's always about Sullivan. At least it's also always enlighteningly entertaining, like "Talk of the Town." Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
Praise for Robert Sullivan:

"A troubadour of urban borders, Robert Sullivan explores territory where no one wants to go."
-Village Voice

Praise for The Meadowlands:
"Provocative, audacious...by looking observantly, without trite moralizing, at the natural world...this book suggests a challenging new model for how we ought to pay attention."
-New York Times Book Review

"A fine, intrepid work of reporting that finds revelations...The Meadowlands is funny, interesting, surprising and bizarre."-Ian Frazier

"A different kind of search for the diverting sublime...what a tremendous feat of the imagination! To celebrate the natural (and unnatural) beauties of a wasteland!"
- San Francisco Chronicle

Praise for A Whale Hunt:
"A rich story, at turns ironic and bemusing, sad and funny."-USA Today

"A book that is at once enthralling, fair-minded, and very funny."-New York Review of Books

"Marvelous...Sullivan has a very Ishmael-like talent for being both funny and generous."
- New York Times Book Review



Book Description
Thoreau went to Walden Pond to live simply in the wild and contemplate his own place in the world by observing nature. Robert Sullivan went to a disused, garbage-filled little alley in lower Manhattan to contemplate the city and its lesser-known inhabitants-by observing the rat.

Rats live in the world precisely where humans do; they survive on the effluvia of human society; they eat our garbage. While dispensing gruesomely fascinating rat facts and strangely entertaining rat-stories-everyone has one, it turns out-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. With a notebook and night-vision gear, he sits nightly in the streamlike flow of garbage and searches for fabled rat-kings, sets out to trap a rat, and eventually travels to the Midwest to learn about rats in Chicago, Milwaukee, and other cities of America. With tales of rat fights in the Gangs of New York era and stories of Harlem rent strike leaders who used rats to win tenants basic rights, Sullivan looks deeper and deeper into the largely unrecorded history of the city and its masses-its herd-of-rats-like mob. Funny, wise, sometimes disgusting but always compulsively readable, Rats earns its unlikely place alongside the great classics of nature writing.

Did you know?

- 26% of all electric cable breaks and 18% of all phone cable disruptions are caused by rats, 25% of all fires of unknown origin are rat-caused, and rats destroy an estimated 1/3 of the world's food supply each year. The rat has been called the world's most destructive mammal-other than man.

- Male and female rats may have sex twenty times a day. A female can produce up to twelve litters of twenty rats a year: one pair of rats has the potential for 15,000 descendants in a year.



About the Author
Robert Sullivan is the author of The Meadowlands and A Whale Hunt, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship. A contributing editor to Vogue, he is a frequent contributor to the New Yorker. His work has also appeared in Condé Nast Traveler and the New York Times Magazine. He lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Thoreau went to Walden Pond to live simply in the wild and contemplate his own place in the world by observing nature. Robert Sullivan went to a disused, garbage-filled alley in lower Manhattan to contemplate the city and its lesser-known inhabitants -- by observing the rat. Rats live in the world precisely where humans do; they survive on the effluvia of human society; they eat our garbage. While dispensing gruesomely fascinating rat facts and strangely entertaining rat stories -- everyone has one, it turns out -- 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. With a notebook and night-vision gear, he sits in the streamlike flow of garbage and searches for fabled rat kings, sets out to trap a rat, and eventually travels to the Midwest to learn about rats in Chicago, Milwaukee, and other cities of America. With tales of rat fights in the Gangs of New York era and stories of Harlem rent strike leaders who used rats to win basic rights for tenants, Sullivan looks deep into the largely unrecorded history of the city and its masses -- its herd-of-rats-like mob. Funny, wise, sometimes disgusting yet always compulsively readable, Rats earns its unlikely place alongside the great classics of nature writing.

FROM THE CRITICS

Phillip Lopate - The Washington Post

Few subjects would seem less immediately appealing to the general reader than rats. So all the more credit must go to Robert Sullivan, who has written an immensely lively, enjoyable, learned, witty and, yes, appealing book on these damnable creatures. Readers acquainted with Sullivan's previous triumph, The Meadowlands, about a New Jersey dump-swamp-wilderness, will anticipate this author's ability to take an unprepossessing terrain and expose its hidden dimensions, through ever-widening circles of expertise, paradox and wonderment. He has set up his shop at the intersection of science and belles-lettres, nature reporting and urbanism, and manages it all beautifully.

The New York Times

Robert Sullivan sees the rat as much more than a pest. For him, the rat is the New Yorker par excellence, the plucky immigrant who set foot in Manhattan just about the time of the American Revolution and, by guile and persistence, put down roots and prospered. The rat is also, for those who care to look closely enough, a living map of the city, so tightly integrated into the local environment that to know one is to know the other. Early on, Sullivan goes so far as to call the rat ''our mirror species,'' a faithful follower that turns up wherever humans pitch their tents and toss out their garbage. — William Grimes

The New Yorker

For a year, Sullivan made pilgrimages to a “filth-slicked little alley” near City Hall to observe rats in their natural habitat. He also trolled libraries for rat lore and interviewed exterminators, biologists, politicians, and ordinary citizens about the timeless struggle against New York’s “most unwanted inhabitants.” The logic behind his peregrinations is often elusive, but the result is a wealth of satisfying information: rats like raw beef, but they like macaroni-and-cheese even more; bringing a rat to court is an effective way to make a point about poor housing conditions; there are more plague-infected rodents in North America today than there were in Europe at the time of the Black Death. Sullivan never falls in love with his subject the way he did in his book on the Meadowlands—rats are rats, after all—but he does persuade us that rats are “our mirror species, reversed but similar, thriving or suffering in the very cities where we do the same.”

Publishers Weekly

In this excellent narrative, Sullivan uses the brown rat as the vehicle for a labyrinthine history of the Big Apple. After pointing out a host of facts about rats that are sure to make you start itching ("if you are in New York... you are within close proximity to one or more rats having sex"), Sullivan quickly focuses in on the rat's seemingly inexhaustible number of connections to mankind. Observing a group of rats in a New York City alley, just blocks from a pre-September 11 World Trade Center, leads Sullivan into a timeless world that has more twists than Manhattan's rat-friendly underbelly. Conversations and field studies with "pest control technicians" spirit him back to 1960s Harlem, when rat infestations played a part in the Civil Rights movement and the creation of tenants' organizations. Researching the names of the streets and landmarks near the rats' homes, Sullivan is led even deeper into the city's history till he is back to the 19th century, when the real gangs of New York were the packs of rats that overran the city's bustling docks. Like any true New Yorker, Sullivan is able to convey simultaneously the feelings of disgust and awe that most city dwellers have for the scurrying masses that live among them. These feelings, coupled with his ability to literally and figuratively insert himself into the company of his hairy neighbors, help to personalize the myriad of topics-urban renewal, labor strikes, congressional bills, disease control, September 11-that rats have nosed their way into over the years. This book is a must pickup for every city dweller, even if you'll feel like you need to wash your hands when you put it down. (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

VOYA - Diane Emge