Rat City Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B. Calhoun

– A Guardian "Best Ideas Books of 2024"
– A New York Times Editors' Choice
– "Best Books of 2024" by The New York Public Library

"A superb scientific history [...] shows how John B Calhoun's pioneering research became influential – horribly, and wrongly, so."
– The Telegraph

"The great strength of Adams and Ramsden's meticulous account is its broad view. They look not just at Calhoun but also at his social and scientific milieu, pithily examining such subjects as stress, personal space homeostasis, evolutionary psychology and the use of rats in experiments [...] The result is a vivid and enthralling book."
– Literary Review

"In the 1950s, in an effort to improve the way we build and run our cities, ethologist John Calhoun used rats as animal models, creating a variety of configurations of "rat city". Social historians Jon Adams and Edmund Ramsden chart his peculiar experiments [...] They conclude that, when it comes to civil order, we could learn a thing or two from our whiskered brethren."
– New Scientist

"A phenomenally weird tale of a man and his rodent metropolis [...] entertaining, phenomenally weird [...] Rat City may well be the world's first-ever work of socio-biographical-scientific pop history [...] a freaky romp down a peculiar passage in the history of ideas, full of oddball cameos (Aldous Huxley! Buckminster Fuller!) and some very sharp science writing."
– The New York Times Book Review

"Rats both epitomize life in the city and serve as icons of laboratory-based psychological research. Adams and Ramsden have crafted a captivating account showing how these meanings intertwined through the career of John B. Calhoun, in whose hands the behavior of rats provided clarion lessons for the fate of a rapidly urbanizing humanity."
– Erika Lorraine Milam, Charles C. and Emily R. Gillispie Professor in the History of Science, Princeton, and author of Creatures of Cain: the Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America

"John Calhoun epitomized the scientist in postwar America: ambitious, rigorous, and occasionally deluded, with lab mice at his feet and the weight of the world on his shoulders. Rat City deftly explores his vision and its reverberations on the social life of Americans, with our lonely crowds, empty skyscrapers, and psychotic incels. It's history that feels all too relevant."
– Dan Piepenbring, co-author of NYT bestseller The Beautiful Ones

"In Rat City, Adams and Ramsden unearth an entire hidden history of the twentieth century city and its anxieties; a fascinating and deeply researched book, as well as a vital reference point for our own age of urban stress."
– Des Fitzgerald, author of The City Of Today Is a Dying Thing

"Breathtaking in its scope yet microscopic in its attention to detail, this journey through the fascinating and previously untold story of John B. Calhoun's impeccable, pioneering and prescient study of the dystopian horror caused by intentional overcrowding in his simulated rat city echoes through decades of human urban squalor, poverty, racial inequality and weak science. Lyrically written and perfectly paced – springing off on interesting, contextual tangents and snapping deftly back to the compelling central narrative – this is a surprising page turner that leaves your mind bursting with new information."
– Justine Smith, journalist and writer

"Rat City is the rare science story that covers a dazzling breadth of inquiry without sacrificing depth of insight [...] a revelatory human tale of character and consequence. Equal parts biography and science writing, it captures one man's intellectual passion and the stakes of our entire species quest to live together."
– Lawrence Lanahan, author of The Lines Between Us: Two Families and a Quest to Cross Baltimore's Racial Divide