Funny, wise, sometimes disgusting but always compulsively readable, Rats earns its unlikely place alongside the great classics of nature writing. Sullivan looks deep into the largely unrecorded history of the city and its masses-its herds-of-rats-like mob. 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. In Rats, the critically acclaimed bestseller, Robert Sullivan spends a year investigating a rat-infested alley just a few blocks away from Wall Street. 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. 'Engaging.a lively, informative compendium of facts, theories, and musings.'-Michiko Kakutani, New York Timesīehold the rat, dirty and disgusting! Robert Sullivan turns the lowly rat into the star of this most perversely intriguing, remarkable, and unexpectedly elegant New York Times bestseller. PSLA Young Adult Top 40 Nonfiction Titles of the Year Where there are humans there must also be rats (except apparently in Alberta, Canada, where an effective state rodent-proofing policy has kept them gnashing their fangs on the border).New York Public Library Book for the Teenager Rats and humans live so close together that in built-up conglomerations they are virtually inseparable.

In fact, the rat exterminator is the modern urban equivalent of the dragon slayer. Until we meet the foe eye to eye that is – and our stomachs churn at thought of their teeming breeding-grounds in our attics, and their endlessly gnawing incisors shredding our carpets and our cables. But to those who have never found a rat skulking, red-eyed and yellow-toothed, behind their bathroom pipes, there is probably something amusing about the job, something faintly ridiculous about the exterminator’s unending battle against a scuttling rodent as long as his forearm.

In New York City, the rat exterminator (nowadays probably known as the Pest Control Manager) is as necessary a component of city life as the plumber, the electrician or the shrink.

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