“Dr. Calhoun’s Mousery is a brilliant reminder, from biologist and author Dugatkin, of how relevant some research remains even decades later. This story of a fascinating, complicated psychologist and his innovative, insightful, troubling studies of overpopulation in rodents is an absorbing read and a potent lesson in moral behavior—both of rodents and of humans."

Deborah Blum, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of "The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century"

“John Calhoun famously showed that rodential ‘society’ degenerates horrendously when rodents live at high densities. Politicians, urban planners, pundits, and criminologists then seized these findings, often distorting them when extrapolating to supposed inevitabilities about urban humans. Dugatkin gives us the life of Calhoun himself―often eccentric, with wildly expansive ideas, unclear as to just how much he wanted them interpreted imprudently. A fascinating read about an immensely influential scientist.”

Robert M. Sapolsky, author of the New York Times–bestseller “Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will”

“William Blake saw the world in a grain of sand. John Calhoun saw it in a mousery—a utopian apartment complex built for mice! Dugatkin’s brilliant, fast-paced account of Calhoun's research takes us on a whirlwind tour with stops along the way at the Royal Society in London, the Vatican, and Washington, DC. Dugatkin is both learned and lively, and his book is irresistible.”

Edward Dolnick, New York Times–best-selling author of "The Clockwork Universe" and "The Writing of the Gods"

“This engagingly written book revives the life and work of the almost-forgotten behavioral population biologist John Calhoun, whose discoveries on the crowding syndrome and social pathology in rodents had at that time far-reaching interdisciplinary implications concerning the consequences of human population growth. This book is a masterpiece of critical, scholarly biography and historical analysis of a field in behavioral biology.”

Bert Hölldobler, coauthor of the Pulitzer Prize–winning "The Ants"