1 . Lots of people dislike rats. They slide around in sewers(下水道). They get in the garbage. They can spread disease. It can be difficult to see their value — other than as an animal model for studying human illness. But rats have more to share.

When the first Europeans came to Virginia, black rats took a ride in their ships. They went on to live with the Europeans and often built nests in the walls of people’s homes. Those nests are full of information about early settlers. They show what specific materials the early settlers used, which helps historians find out what they could make and produce for themselves —and what they had to import from across the ocean.

In rats, DNA “really tells a story about the people,” says Emily Puckett, who studies how a species’ DNA differs across its range. Another species — the brown rat can help tell a large story about how people spread around the globe, Puckett finds. Brown rats were originally from Eastern China and Mongolia. From there, Puckett’s DNA samples have shown that the brown rat spread south and east, to India and almost everywhere else. The DNA in its bones could help determine where the rats came from — and which cities might have been linked.

At the University of York in England, David Orton studies animals that lived with ancient humans. Usually, when historians find remains of an ancient city, they want to dig and find more. “The trouble is that most of the time, the ancient cities tend to be underneath modern cities,” Orton says. “And you can’t just go and dig the whole thing up.” But you can follow the rats. Rats are “very dependent on humans for their food supplies and for their shelter,” he explains.

These rats have given us a new appreciation. “It was fascinating to think that these little creatures are stealing things, and … safeguarding them for us to find later,” Maureen Elgersman Lee, a historian, says.

3 . When we decided to sell our flat, having been cheated by the previous owner, we thought it was really important to be completely honest with any potential buyers about having knotweed (蓼科杂草) in the garden. It had been such an unpleasant and stressful experience for us and we didn’t want to have anyone else suffer any longer.

We bought our two-bedroom flat in 2014, when it was just the two of us. But after having three kids it became too small, so we sold it last year. The flat has a small garden at the back, but we didn’t know the presence of knotweed until well after we moved in and had a note from our neighbor behind our flat saying that they thought we had knotweed. Then we had a look and found some very small offshoots for this was just around springtime. At that point my husband and I certainly didn’t realize quite how problematic it could be. But then we started reading all the horror stories and became really concerned — people couldn’t get a mortgage; they couldn’t sell; the plant was creeping through concrete etc.

Then we treated the offshoots with glyphosate and as far as we knew it was completely gone. Before we put the property on the market we had the house checked by some specialists, who thoroughly inspected everything, including the connecting garden, and couldn’t find anything at all. We signed a ten-year insurance-backed guarantee with the company that could be transferred to the new owners, then started marketing the property through an agent.

In fact we found a buyer pretty quickly and they didn’t beat us down on price as we’d already done much for the treatment. Knotweed doesn’t need to be a deal-breaker, as long as you’re upfront about it.

4 . A GIFT MEMBERSHIP IN THE NYRB CLASSICS BOOK CLUB

Members of the NYRB Classics Book Club have received new translations of   Balzac and Nobel Prize winner Patrick Modiano, as well as classics by William Gass and many others.“NYRB has made a specialty of rescuing and reviving all kinds of ignored or forgotten works in English or in translation, fiction and nonfiction by writers famous and unknown.” Said The New York Times.

A membership in the NYRB Classics Book Club ensures a monthly literary surprise. Each month, editors select one new book and we send it to members as soon as it is available.

Our special holiday membership, including free shipping in the US, is $135, a savings of $60 off the regular book club price. Gift memberships start with the January 2023 selection.

To order a membership for yourself or a gift membership, please call   1-800-354-0050 or visit www.nyrb.com/holiday. The holiday offer price outside of the US is $225, a savings of $45 off the regular book club price.

OUR RECENT BOOK CLUB SELECTIONS

The Silentiary by Antonio di Benedetto • Woman Running in the Mountains by Yūko Tsushima • Gold by Rumi • Peter the Great’s African by Alexander Pushkin • Guston in Time by Ross Feld • The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick • The Flanders Road by Claude Simon • The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings

7 . What would life be like if you were a rocker, a soccer player, a professor at Stanford University, and a Nobel Prize winner? Carolyn Bertozzi from the US lives such a cool life!

Bertozzi, 56, wins this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry and becomes this year’s only female winner in science and the eighth female to receive the chemistry prize in history.

Bertozzi won the prize for studying the sugar coats of cells. She has found a smart way to connect cells together. This finding helps to develop better tests for serious diseases like cancer.

However, Bertozzi said she only fell in love with chemistry until her second year at Harvard University. “Most of my classmates thought the class was very difficult. But I liked it a lot because in my eyes the problems were challenging even though it usually took me long hours to solve them.”

Besides doing science studies, Bertozzi has lived a colorful life. She was a keyboarder in a rock band and she also played soccer, winning an athletic scholarship from Harvard.

Moreover, Bertozzi never forgets her job as a female scientist. “In the late 1980s, only 10 percent of the students were females,” she told Chemical & Engineering News. “There were maybe only one or two females in a lab, so we tried to support each other by starting a monthly get-together. Now, I’m so glad to see more and more females taking part in science.” In 2022, Bertozzi won an award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science for her work to increase diversity in science.

8 . Erik Nilsson, an American journalist works at China Daily and a recipient of the Chinese Government Friendship Award, first came to China in 2005 for an internship program in China Daily when he was studying journalism at Central Michigan University. A year later, Nilsson returned to Beijing and joined the newspaper. “I love the food, the culture, the history, and above all, the people. I returned to work in China, and I never left,” he said.

Nilsson’s biggest contribution to China is his devotion to telling its stories. Working for China Daily enables Nilsson to share stories from all over China with Chinese and global audiences alike. His videos, narrated in slow, clear English, are subtitled in English and Mandarin.

Nilsson has coauthored 16 books and won multiple journalism awards, and his videos about China have won nearly 300 million views. As he talks about his “life mission”, it is not pride that stands out, but passion for his work and humility towards the stories he gets to tell.

Because of his outstanding journalistic works and long volunteering work, Nilsson was in 2006 awarded the Chinese Government Friendship Award, the highest honor that can be given to foreigners who have contributed to China’s development. Nilsson, then aged 33, was the youngest ever winner of the award. During the Spring Festival reception in 2017, he delivered a Six-Minute speech on media development. “China is making greater strides toward the center of the global stage. The country has such a unique history, culture, and even geography that I think it’s difficult for many people outside the country to understand,” Nilsson said.

“Many Western readers said that they gained a more balanced and positive understanding of China after reading my articles and books. Many Chinese readers also said they achieved a deeper understanding of their own country. This is what I’m happiest about. There’s an extraordinary value in helping the world better understand China,” he said.