More Cunning than Man: A Social History of Rats and Men Book

A lot of this is way off base; many of the reviews I have seen have focused on how well-researched this book is and while it is true that some of the elements are, a lot of them are obviously urban legends or horribly over-exaggerated anecdotes given by people who obviously are not aware of much about rats and are speaking only from fear or cultural stereotypes.

I spent a great deal of time examining the points he made about how rats are ferocious, disease-ridden, gluttonous and tend to over-populate their environment and I couldn't help but draw a parallel with humanity and wonder if that is why humans have always held them in such horror - because they hold up a very unflattering mirror to us.

The tends to open up each chapter with horrifying, sensationlistic stories about rats lurking in corners preparing to jump out and eat babies or some other such nonsense whereas anyone who knows anything about rats will tell you that rats much prefer to avoid humans and will not tend to bite unless they are provoked (or you smell like food, because they are remarkably short-sighted) - and being at heart lazy animals, prefer much easier to attain meals than humans, which are much larger than they are. His hysterical recounting of the diseases that rats carry is outdated; many of the diseases listed have since been determined to actually be much more frequently carried by other animals, including other rodents that humans find "cute," such as prairie dogs and squirrels (but we don't find mass extermination campaigns against them, do we?). Zoonosis from rodents, in any event, is extremely rare in industrialized countries in the modern era.

Overall I was very disappointed in this book - I was hoping for some cold, hard facts and instead I got all the same sort of hysteria and sensationalism I could get reading the Star. The only reason I gave it 3 stars was because there were a few interesting facts in there, and the bibliography is very useful. If you are actually interested in learning about rats, however, I suggest you look elsewhere.