The Rat: A Perverse Miscellany

  • Barbara Hodgson
Ten Speed Press, $15.95

Eighteenth-century engraving from a drawing by Buffon of “Le Surmulot”, the brown rat. The picture is reproduced in The Rat: A Perverse Miscellany by Barbara Hodgson (Ten Speed Press, $15. 5), an elegant and entertaining little paperback devoted to the animal's habits and accomplishments, but most of all to centuries of literary and pictorial evocations (from Hieronymus Bosch to James Bond) that show our deep fascination with this despised rodent.