Robert Sullivan’s new book may make some readers a bit queasy, but NYT book reviewer Michiko Kakutani calls it “”Engaging … a lively, informative compendium of facts, theories and musings.”
The subject is…rats.
This article relates how the author studied the habits of rodents each evening over the period of a year in New York’s Chinatown aided by a pair of infra-red goggles. He found that social connections within the rat community are amazingly similar to the city’s predominant species. Happily, he tells us that the long-believed formula that there is one rat per New Yorker is, as of the moment, fictitious.
Before the bandwagon…
I caught a review of this in Kirkus, I think, back in February when I was just starting my job and had been given the Health section as my collection development assignment. I figured, Hey! This is about Public Health. My boss cringed when she saw the order form, but I explained what it was about and she said OK. I felt so justified when I saw reviews for it popping up everywhere in the last month and a half.
rats in financial district, not Chinatown
The article says the author observed rats “as they feasted on garbage from a Chinese eatery in Eden’s Alley, a tiny, cobble-stoned alley in New York’s downtown financial district.”