Prepare to be disgusted, amazed, shocked (and informed) by the astonishing and mysterious creature that has annoyed humanity for centuries: Rats! Able to claw straight up a brick wall, squeeze through a pipe the width of a quarter, and gnaw through iron and concrete, rats are also revealed in this fascinating book to be incredibly intelligent and capable of compassion. Weaving together science, history, culture, and folklore, award-winning writer Albert Marrin offers a look at rats that goes from the curious to repulsive, horrifying to comic, fearsome to inspiring. Arresting black-and-white scratchboard illustrations with bold red accents add visual punch to this study of a creature that has annoyed, disgusted, nourished, and intrigued its human neighbors for centuries. * "[A] lively and informative overview of the history and behavior of the widely encountered rodent.... It's a different sort of discussion... for this well-known historian and biographer and one that he has clearly enjoyed, as will a wide variety of nonfiction readers and animal fans. There's a bibliography of adult sources and children's nonfiction as well as a listing of literary works featuring rats." —School Library Journal, starred review “Pleasantly icky.” —Booklist A Junior Library Guild Selection Includes bibliography, further reading list, and a list of rats in literature

Tells how rats and humans have lived together and interacted throughout history.

Some extraordinary rats come to the aid of a mouse family in this Newbery Medal Award–winning classic by notable children’s author Robert C. O’Brien. Mrs. Frisby, a widowed mouse with four small children, is faced with a terrible problem. She must move her family to their summer quarters immediately, or face almost certain death. But her youngest son, Timothy, lies ill with pneumonia and must not be moved. Fortunately, she encounters the rats of NIMH, an extraordinary breed of highly intelligent creatures, who come up with a brilliant solution to her dilemma. And Mrs. Frisby in turn renders them a great service.

Two lonely creatures find that companionship is closer than they thought in this charming tale of friendship This is the story of a writer and a reader. The writer is a person. The reader is a rat. They share an old house on Long Island, but have never met. How these two lonely creatures discover one another is the essence of this story.

This eye-opening, well-researched examination of mankind's oldest competitor is filled with weirdly fascinating information about the history of the rat and the way it consistently outsmarts man. Illustrations.

RATS! The town of Hamelin is overrun with them and the citizens are in a tizzy-until the mysterious Pied Piper appears, offering to solve their dilemma for a small fee. Dave and Jean Perry tell the story like never before in this fast-paced, 35-minute musical setting. The characters are charming, the dialog is witty, the songs are clever and fun to sing, and the fully-orchestrated SoundTrax CD is spectacular!

This popular and unusual book by Hans Zinsser, a brilliant physician and researcher, takes an unusual look at history by examining the influence of diseases on society, and will prove a fascinating read for anyone with an interest in biology or medical history.

New York Public Library Book for the Teenager New York Public Library Book to Remember PSLA Young Adult Top 40 Nonfiction Titles of the Year "Engaging...a lively, informative compendium of facts, theories, and musings."-Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Behold the rat, dirty and disgusting! Robert Sullivan turns the lowly rat into the star of this most perversely intriguing, remarkable, and unexpectedly elegant New York Times bestseller. Love them or loathe them, rats are here to stay-they are city dwellers as much as (or more than) we are, surviving on the effluvia of our society. In Rats, the critically acclaimed bestseller, Robert Sullivan spends a year investigating a rat-infested alley just a few blocks away from Wall Street. Sullivan gets to know not just the beast but its friends and foes: the exterminators, the sanitation workers, the agitators and activists who have played their part in the centuries-old war between human city dweller and wild city rat. Sullivan looks deep into the largely unrecorded history of the city and its masses-its herds-of-rats-like mob. Funny, wise, sometimes disgusting but always compulsively readable, Rats earns its unlikely place alongside the great classics of nature writing. With an all-new Afterword by the author

The intriguing story and turbulent history of a paper Charles Dickens praised for its ‘range of information and profundity of knowledge’, and which Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, simply endorsed with the remark: ‘Of course I read The Sporting Life’. It was the Queen Mother’s love of horseracing that made her such an avid reader of the Life and coverage of that sport forms the core of this book, but there is so much more to fascinate the reader including eyewitness accounts of the first fight for the heavyweight championship of the world and Captain Webb’s heroic Channel swim of 1875. Highlights in the history of cricket, football and rugby are also featured, while chapters on coursing and greyhound racing rank alongside surreal reports on ratting contests and songbird singing competitions. And for 30 years Tommy Wisdom made his motoring reports unique by competing against the best at Brooklands, Le Mans and in many Monte Carlo rallies, while Henry Longhurst’s golfing column was simply the best. The paper’s strident campaigns for racing reforms are also chronicled along with its coverage of major news stories, from Fred Archer’s shocking suicide to its own untimely demise. Its travails in the law courts are documented from its first year, when it was forced to change its title, to its last, when it had to pay libel damages to the training team of Lynda and Jack Ramsden and their jockey, Kieren Fallon. A higher price was paid by its French correspondent who was killed in a duel over an article he had written, while the terrible toll the First World War took on the nation’s sporting heroes is catalogued by the Life’s embedded army correspondent, against a background of political bungling that is being repeated today.

This meticulously edited e-artnow publication is dedicated to the lost but not forgotten world of the ferocious Norsemen. This edition of Viking history, Norse Mythology and Literature is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Norse Mythology: The Beginning Odin Frigga Thor Tyr Bragi Idun Niörd Frey Freya Uller Forseti Heimdall Hermod Vidar Vali The Norns The Valkyrs Hel Ægir Balder Loki The Giants The Dwarfs The Elves The Sigurd Saga The Story of Frithiof The Twilight of the Gods Greek and Northern Mythologies History of the Vikings: Causes of the Viking Movement The Viking Movement Down to the Middle of the 9th Century The Vikings in England to the Death of Harthacnut The Vikings in the Frankish Empire to the Founding of Normandy (911) The Vikings in Ireland to the Battle of Clontarf (1014) The Vikings in the Orkneys, Scotland, the Western Islands and Man The Vikings in Baltic Lands and Russia Viking Civilisation Scandinavian Influence in the Orkneys, Shetlands, the Western Islands and Man Scandinavian Influence in Ireland Scandinavian Influence in England Scandinavian Influence in the Empire and Iceland Eddas & Sagas: The Elder Eddas of Saemund The Younger Eddas of Sturleson Norse Sagas Kings' Sagas Sagas of Icelanders Legendary Sagas Norse Ballads: The Faroese Ballad of Nornagest The Faroese Ballad of Hjalmar and Angantyr The Danish Ballad of Angelfyr and Helmer The Faroese Ballad of Arngrim's Sons The Faroese Riddle Ballad The Shetland Ballad of Hildina