Rat City is two books. One is a biography of John B. Calhoun, the researcher behind a series of experiments designed to study the effects of overcrowding in rat populations. Calhoun set up artificial warrens, eventually called "universes," designed to cause the rats to live in a crowd that would naturally occur, but in the process to be sure that all other material needs of the rats were met.

The research itself arises out of counterintuitive results that Calhoun discovered in trying to kill rats. Soon, though, Calhoun starts to see broader interpretations of his work pertaining to human society, and achieves a bit of fame both popular and academic over it.

The other book is a study of the the research done on the effects of the constructed environment on humans and their mental health, mostly in the 60s and 70s. Calhoun was an important member of these Space Cadets (get it?). It is primarily the first book, but the second allows it room for generous but informative digressions on the people and things influencing him, and who in turn he influenced.

Calhoun strays close to the tropes of a mad scientist. The authors bring up his awareness of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and it feels like he tried to make it into an instruction manual. While excellent in Kuhn's 'normal science,' (Calhoun literally writes the book on rat behavior) he possessed a pressing need for greatness, leading him to start quoting Revelations in science lectures and trying to devise a systemic framework for a future Republic of Letters.

The book is equally as big in approach and passion. I could have read it in a single sitting. This is not a Golden Retriever of a book: this is a Cattle Dog on Ritalin kind of a book. I love this. The authors do an excellent job of predicting questions. The bifurcated style has a rough start but it pays off in getting to explore the intellectual milieu of Calhoun's work and the history influencing it.

The problem is the book's conclusion. The authors do a good job of explaining Calhoun's struggles to explain his research, and his struggles with people misinterpreting it. Generally, it is fair, and it explores different ideas about his work. The ending feels like a different book.

I think that what happens is the 'tyranny of narrative' kicks in. Calhoun's end feels so ignoble, abruptly forced into retirement due to shifting priorities within the agency he worked for and his own failing health, his work not completed to his satisfaction. There is no subsequent academic reappraisal. His scholarship is a quirky footnote.

But that feels bad, so instead the end spends way too much time engaged in pearl-clutching over psychotropic medication taking over our lives, then turns incoherent with its own framework.

There is this sort of paradox where to avoid a political statement is to avow the status quo, which is itself a political statement. The book describes Calhoun's work not as political, but as capable of being politicized. This is that paradox. There is too much of the book asserting that Calhoun did not say X, where the citation to Calhoun has him saying X, but with extra steps. Part of the problem here is Calhoun, who often did not know what Calhoun was trying to say.

But it feels like the authors spend the book being warmly critical of his thought and work, only to shift that in the penultimate chapter in order to fashion him a tragic hero. Likewise, it feels like the bifurcated nature of the book allows for so many other topics that get dropped, mostly, in the interest of a tight narrative around Calhoun, one that does not match up the rest of the book.

I liked this book, but the concluding both sides-ism or the need to make a grand exit or mask-off moment frustrates what is otherwise a well-written and exciting book. And at any rate, I am still waiting to hear whether I caught ASD from the Loop.

My thanks to the authors, Jon Adams and Edmund Ramsden, for writing the book, and to the publisher, Melville House Publishing, for making the ARC available to me.