 <p>Assuming you have <em>some</em> unique index on the table, this works great:</p> <pre><code>book = Book.first Book.delete_all(book.attributes) </code></pre> <p>If you don't have a unique index on the table, the above is <strong>dangerous</strong> - you could nuke more rows than anticipated. If that is the case, either add a unique index on an existing column (or columns) or else add a PK to the table.</p>