Rat City is a name known by many and despised by all. What is so special about this place? Why was Al Simmons drawn here when he returned to Earth as a Hellspawn, and why now, 100+ years in the future, is something similar happening again?

Behind the internet's viral "Universe 25" experiment and Robert C. O'Brien's iconic novel, Mrs. Frisby and the Secret of NIMH, was one scientist who set out to change the way we view our fellow man — using rats . . . After the Civil War and throughout the twentieth century, cities in northern American states absorbed a huge increase in populations, particularly of immigrants and African Americans from southern states. City governments responded by creating new regulations that were often segregationist — corralling black Americans, for example, into small, increasingly overcrowded neighborhoods, or into high-rise “projects.” The situation intensified after World War II, as rising crime and racial unrest swept the nation, and blame fell on the crowded conditions of city life. The hardest-hit populations were left marginalized and voiceless. Enter John B. Calhoun, an ecologist employed by the National Institute of Mental Health to study the effects of overcrowding on rats. From 1947 to 1977, Calhoun built a series of sprawling habitats in which a rat’s every need was met—except space. The results were cataclysmic. Did a similar fate await our own teeming cities? Rat City is the first book to tell the story of Calhoun’s experiments, and their extraordinary influence — an enthralling record of urban design and dystopian science. Meticulously researched, it follows Calhoun’s struggle to solve the problem of crowding before America’s cities drain into the behavioral sink. And as the “war on rats” continues around the world, and our post-pandemic society reevaluates the necessity of urban living, the riveting story of Rat City is more relevant than ever.

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

Dr. Ammon is back, and he wants whatÕs his. Peter and Quinlan have a plan, but the suit may have other ideas.

Growing Up in Rat City and Beyond is the autobiography of noted White Center, Washington resident Alexander Sasonoff. The 230 page tome, illustrated by the author himself, chronicles his years growing up in the often rough and tumble suburb of Seattle. Chapters include descriptions of the post depression, pre-war years of the blue collar town and it's colorful residents, including stories about the skipper of the purse seiner 'Loyal' Vic Carlsen, prizefighters Harry 'Kid' Matthews and Al Hostak and all the boozing, brawling regulars that inhabited the town with the rodent moniker.

The rift between Sam and Twitch has grown. Unfortunately, Twitch is out on his own and is the target of a killer, and he could really use Sam as backup!

As hard as she tries, trouble keeps finding Cyan. The people in her orbit keep getting hurt. Cyan has been pushed too far this time. She is about to explode...