This is not my favorite of Sullivan's books but if you enjoy his typically personal, idiosyncratic, and frequently humorous approach to history, you find this book interesting and entertaining. I grew up in New Jersey so I particularly enjoyed reading about the places Sullivan visits with which I'm ...
Full review here:Rats, yes, I am writing about a book about RATS!The book in one sentence: A man observes rats in a obscure alley in New York ... for fun!My thoughts: I first mentioned this book in a Friday 56 way back in October 2011. I read this over several months and I wanted to write about this...
"If they are not eating, then rats are usually having sex."Shudder.This is a great book. I haven't read much in the way of popular science books, but Rats was immensely enjoyable. Weaving in and out of discussions about the behaviors and history of rats to move into bits about the strange people who...
I didn't always agree with Sullivan but I thoroughly enjoyed his approach.
Fascinating account of a trip into a ruined New Jersey wilderness. Sullivan manages to find beauty in the sludge.
Robert Sullivan smashes our myth of Thoreau as the technophobic, misanthropic, tree-hugging loner and in its place depicts another man, one who grew up in Concord, but went to college at Harvard, grew melons and threw an annual melon party for his Concord neighbors, took over the family business (a ...
So, it's not as much about rats as I thought it would be. And when I read the first bit to decide if I wanted to read it, I thought there'd be more about rat-people parallels, and the ones there were weren't really all that great.It was a pretty entertaining read nonetheless, but if you think you'r...
Rats by Robert Sullivan is a fascinating study of rats and their cohabitation with humans. One particularly interesting section was on rats and plague, which, as you may know, is spread to humans by the rat flea. Apparently the Japanese were the first to experiment with the use of plague as a biolog...
Some interesting facts about the species but not especially well written and kind of boring.
Books read in the past:This is a lovely book about rats in a New York alley, with tangents to explore aspects of rat life raised by these observations. Read with Rats, Lice, and History for maximum rodent-related pleasure.
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