Rating: 
Summary: I give the book five comets
Review: (i.e., stars with tails). This is a fun book that interweaves the natural history of urban rats with various bits of human history. It not only gives you a good sense of the survival skills and daily lives of rats, it delves into issues such as plague, blood sports, revolutionary war history, and labor politics. The book explains a lot about rats and pest control but also be prepared to learn about tangentially related material.
Rating:
Summary: All Bait, No Switch!!
Review: A very quirky and intriguing read! Rats combines the observations of 'urban wildlife', NYC history and a social portrait of the pest control industry *well as it relates to rats!*.
Mr. Sullivan takes on a creature that is maligned, misunderstood and indeed little studied because, well, we're talking about rats. His take on the natural history of the animal itself is interwoven with the story of the alley in which he watched his subjects and peppered with first hand experiences gleaned from NYC's pest control specialists.
Especially intriguing for me was the portion of the book which discussed the unsung & unpraised pest controllers that came from all over the country to help with the 9/11 clean up. They helped contain a potentially volatile population explosion of the rodents and even though I live far from ground zero, they have my gratitude and thanks.
The book is well worded and will engage the reader's interest and hold it. Pick it up if you are a NYC, history or wildlife enthusiast.
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointment
Review: As a rat fan and history major I was excited to read this book. I am very glad it was a library book and not one I'd purchased for it was a huge disappointment. There isn't a whole lot about rats in the darn book! I tried really hard to like it, but the composition of the book was poor and it is not very well crafted so I have to give it a single star. If he'd had the guts to get up closer to the rats it would have made for a more compelling story.
Rating: 
Summary: Skin-crawlingly interesting
Review: Author Robert Sullivan spent many nights over the course of a year observing the nocturnal goings-on--rat-watching, in other words--in an L-shaped alley (actually the intersection of two alleys, Ryders Alley and Edens Alley) in Manhattan, just blocks away from Wall Street and City Hall and the site of the World Trade Center. (Sullivan had been trying to trap a rat in his alley in the early morning of September 11th, 2001.) The alley he selected is bounded by a Chinese restaurant on one side and an Irish pub on the other, so that its greasy-slick cobblestones are awash nightly in edible garbage of both ethnic varieties, palatable to aficionados of either type. The alley is, in short, the perfect place to raise children.Rats, as it happens, have a lot of children to raise. Among the skin-crawlingly fascinating bits of information Sullivan provides in his highly readable paean to the Rattus norvegicus, or brown rat, is that both male and female rats can have sex twenty times a day. "If they are not eating, then rats are usually having sex. Most likely, if you are in New York while you are reading this sentence or even in any other major city in America, then you are in proximity to two or more rats having sex." Nor is their copulation unproductive: "One rat's nest can turn into a rat colony of fifty rats in six months. One pair of rats has the potential of 15,000 descendants in a year." Sullivan's observations on rats in general and on the rats in his alley in particular are interspersed with rat-related asides. He includes in his book, for example, chapters on New York's rat-motivated rent strikes in the 1960s and the rat fights of the 19th century, in which single dogs--and more rarely men--were pitted against scores of rats at a time for the amusement of a human audience. Some of Sullivan's tangents are more interesting than others, and readers will differ in their preferences. (The anecdotes of rat-hardened exterminators or urine baths as precaution against the Black Death? There is something here for every taste.) And Sullivan sometimes gets carried away with his poeticizing of the rat's experience and relationship to man. (I mean, they're just rats.) The book as a whole, however, is a delightful look at a rarely-considered world that is, often quite literally, right beneath our feet.
Rating:
Summary: New Your History - of Rats and Mankind
Review: Every now and then there are books that are like sneaker waves at the ocean. You don't know when you'll see one, but you know they are out there! This is one of those books. If you are interested in the history of New York (mostly Manhattan) and how the rat has been part of that history than this is for you. Gotham is considered one of the best books on New York city, and in the index there is no mention of rats. However after reading this book, you'll have a new appreciation for ecology, and how human life is inseparable from nature. It is well written, and a joy to read. I highly recommend it for that reason alone!
Rating:
Summary: Good, needs proofing
Review: Excellent book, as much about New York as it is about rats -- particularly the brown (or Norwegian) rat. Not for you "fancy rat" (i.e., pet rat) fanciers, but it is a fascinating look at a world parallel to our own, linked yet discrete. The world, of course, of rats. Funny and insightful, yet educational as well (God forbid). Nonetheless, one of my pet peeves was extremely irked, and that is poor editing. Whoever edited this book was either A). Drunk, or B). (...)In short, good book, poor editing. Worth a peak though, for those of you who are curious about the world around you.
Rating:
Summary: There is a rat here alright!
Review: I am amazed at the good press that Rats received. Public Radio interviews, reviews in the major mags. Seemed like a must read. What a bust. There is very little about Rats in this book---not more than a few pages. If you are interested in obscure New York History (which is not even slightly connected to rats) then this is the book for you. The book continues to get great reviews, even in this forum. I must have missed something.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I have rarely found a more poorly-written book on such an interesting subject. Darn shame, as I (like other reviewers below) really wanted to like this book due to its subject.
The author does not move himself to the background. This book is not about rats so much as the author's adventures as he learns about rats. Rats are interesting, Robert Sullivan is less so.
The book is full of distracting misspellings ('They' for 'The' for example) and nonstandard capitalization ('Edens alley' for 'Edens' Alley' throughout). Each page has a half dozen places that brings the reader out of the story and back into the real world.
Further, the author is unable to write in a linear fashion. His description of of the alley is a jumble. I read the entire book and still cannot make a mental map of the place.
All in all, the subject deserves a better treatment than it receives here. An interesting, readable book on the urban rat remains to be written.
Rating:
Summary: A Most Fascinating Creature
Review: I have to say that my personal experience with rats is limited. Growing up in a small town in the Midwest, I encountered the very occasional mouse but I have no recollections of seeing a rat until I moved to New York City. Even then, my only encounters have been from a distance on subway tracks. But I find the rat a fascinating creature. Clearly, Robert Sullivan does too. A lot has been made of the multitude of facts about rats that Sullivan communicates in this book and does do that but he also does much more. He gives us a history lesson of rat migrations through history along with quite a few interesting anecdotes about the history of New York City from the days of the Revolution through the fall of the World Trade Center. Despite his obvious respect for the rat, he blows away numerous myths about the rat (like one rat per person in NYC) and tells a lot about how to "control" rats, as they can never really be exterminated. However, the real engagement in this book comes from everything being couched in the author's one year field study of the rat in a small alley in downtown New York. Without this, all of Sullivan's informative research wouldn't be quite so interesting. What we end up with is a very readable book. I don't consider myself to be afraid of rats though I'm sure if I would put myself in some of the positions Sullivan did, I would feel every bit of a chill running up and down my spine. Fortunately, we don't have to put ourselves face to face with rats. Sullivan has done the job for us and written a wonderful account of the experience. Anyone whose ever had even an inkling of wonder about these tenacious creature wouldn't want to miss this book.
Rating:
Summary: Strange subject. Great book!
Review: I heard about this one through the proverbial grape-vine. Had I not, I would have likely steered clear of this book. The subject seems at best boring and at worst creepy. I am so glad that I was able to get beyond those superficial ideas and read this engaging and facinating work. Mr. Sullivan has the unique talent of painting a word picture that transports you into the alley he so often frequented in researching this work. A wonderful book not to be missed.
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