Surprisingly funny & compulsively readable, ” Rats” is an unlikely account of a year spent in a garbage-strewn alley in lower Manhattan. Sullivan spends the year with a notebook & night-vision goggles, hunting for fabled rat-kings, trapping a rat of his own, & trying (and failing) to conquer his own fear of rats. He meets the exterminators, garbage men, & civic activists, who play their part in the centuries-old war between human city-dweller & wild city rat. He travels to a bizarre Midwestern conference on rats that brings together the leading experts on rat history, behaviour, & control (did you know that one pair of rats has the potential for 15, 000 descendants in a year? That rats` teeth are harder than steel?). &, he reveals the many ways rats` lives mirror those of humans. Sullivan`s unusual & absorbing book earns a place alongside the classics of travel writing.