Reviewed by Suzi Steffen

“When I look into the rat alley…I see the beginnings of the great city of New York....I see fear and courage. I see nature and I see human nature and I see great crowds of hungry or drunk or tired or righteousness-inspired men and women as they rise up and shout, Huzzah, America! Huzzah!”

That’s what Robert Sullivan sees in his favorite rat-infested alley in Manhattan, a few blocks from the former World Trade Center. Although not everyone would envision the American Revolutionary War in the habits of city rats, Sullivan has no trouble doing so. He pads his not-quite-interesting work with such fun historical detours. Unfortunately, he goes several steps further, attempting to find great meaning when there may be only vermin.

This is the refuge of a nonfiction writer who doesn’t have enough of a subject, or the unlucky writer who can’t quite find a narrative—or an especially compelling character—along the way.

Certainly the vivid rat-catching vignettes and the fascinating natural and human history recounted in the book can hold any reader’s attention. But the flimsy supporting structure and the mad attempts to equate humans with rats (repetitively and in no subtle fashion, as even the author acknowledges) fail. This book is a good summer read: slight, weakly written, but full of cocktail-party trivia.