Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans

4.14 of 5 stars 4.14 · rating details · 1,326 ratings · 283 reviews

The hidden history of a haunted and beloved city told through the intersecting lives of nine remarkable characters

After Hurricane Katrina, Dan Baum moved to New Orleans to write about the city’s response to the disaster for The New Yorker. He quickly realized that Katrina was not the most interesting thing about New Orleans, not by a long shot. The most interesting question, which struck him as he watched residents struggling to return, was this: Why are New Orleanians—along with people from all over the world who continue to flock there—so devoted to a place that was, even before the storm, the most corrupt, impoverished, and violent corner of America?
Here’s the answer. Nine Lives is a multivoiced biography of this dazzling, surreal, and imperiled city through the lives of nine characters over forty years and bracketed by two epic storms: Hurricane Betsy, which transformed the city in the 1960’s, and Katrina, which nearly destroyed it. These nine lives are windows into every strata of one of the most complex and fascinating cities in the world. From outsider artists and Mardi Gras Kings to jazz-playing coroners and transsexual barkeeps, these lives are possible only in New Orleans, but the city that nurtures them is also, from the beginning, a city haunted by the possibility of disaster. All their stories converge in the storm, where some characters rise to acts of heroism and others sink to the bottom. But it is New Orleans herself—perpetually whistling past the grave yard—that is the story’s real heroine.
Nine Lives is narrated from the points of view of some of New Orleans’s most charismatic characters, but underpinning the voices of the city is an extraordinary feat of reporting that allows Baum to bring this kaleidoscopic portrait to life with brilliant color and crystalline detail. Readers will find themselves wrapped up in each of these individual dramas and delightfully immersed in the life of one of this country’s last unique places, even as its ultimate devastation looms ever closer. By resurrecting this beautiful and tragic place and portraying the extraordinary lives that could have taken root only there, Nine Lives shows us what was lost in the storm and what remains to be saved.

DAN BAUM is a former staff writer for The New Yorker, and has written for numerous other magazines and newspapers. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

(less)

Hardcover, 352 pages

Published February 10th 2009 by Spiegel & Grau (first published 2009)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Best New Orleans Books

8th out of 159 books — 107 voters

New Orleans

45th out of 55 books — 24 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 2,777)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Jan 28, 2009 Lynette rated it 5 of 5 stars

New Orleans is a city full of contradictions, a place out of context with the rest of America. It defies understanding, explanation, and most especially, classification. It’s a quality the residents hold onto, this testament of uniqueness, even as the city has teetered time and again on the brink of destruction.

I’ve lived near New Orleans for most of my life. I’m a frequent visitor there, and, like everyone else who comes, I’ve fallen in love with its decadent grandness, its welcoming, leisurel...more New Orleans is a city full of contradictions, a place out of context with the rest of America. It defies understanding, explanation, and most especially, classification. It’s a quality the residents hold onto, this testament of uniqueness, even as the city has teetered time and again on the brink of destruction.

I’ve lived near New Orleans for most of my life. I’m a frequent visitor there, and, like everyone else who comes, I’ve fallen in love with its decadent grandness, its welcoming, leisurely way of life. All manner of man calls New Orleans home, and every one of them is right. It is unique, out of step with the rest of America. And this is exactly why it is so important to save, even now, even as the great lady teeters on her knees trying desperately to rise from the devastation of Katrina.

Dan Baum, on assignment from The New Yorker after the storm, quickly learned this. He, along with his wife Margaret, eventually moved to New Orleans in order to write a book, one in which, using the bookends of Betsy in 1965 and Katrina in 2005, captures perfectly what it means to love this city.

Baum chose nine people he had gotten to know after the storm, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews, writing the story of the city through their eyes. They are from vastly different ends of the socio-political spectrum, ranging from the widow of a revered Mardi Gras Indian chief to the long-time coroner of Orleans parish, from a transsexual bar owner to a former king of Rex and pillar of the Uptown community. Their stories are unique, yet a common thread runs through them all – the deep, abiding love of this place, of the home New Orleans offers to each.

The author captures that love without being preachy or overly sentimental. New Orleans is far from a fairy-tale land of mutual respect, understanding, and tolerance. Poverty, desperation, and crime are huge, unending problems, and Baum acknowledges this. The stories he tells are candid, real, and fraught with generations of loss and disappointment. They are, however, also stories of hope, people who have risen, time and again, despite adversity after adversity.

Many people in the rest of the United States have questioned why we should rebuild such a place, crippled as it is by poverty and corruption. It takes spending time in New Orleans to learn its value, I suppose, to experience the unique magic that makes this city special. If you can’t visit, however, read this book. Dan Baum has clearly seen and understands. Five Stars.
(less)

3 likes · like · see review

Aug 02, 2011 Colleen Clark rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: anyone who is interested in New Orleans, or in recent American events.

Recommended to Colleen by: my husband's 94 year old aunt

Fascinating and insightful non-fiction story of New Orleans from Hurricane Betsy (1965) to Katrina and its aftermath told through the story of 9 New Orleanians from all walks of life, including long-term residents of the Ninth Ward (destroyed by Katrina) to a member of the white aristocracy of "uptown", the Garden District area (above sea level).

Dan Baum, a former writer for the New Yorker, interviewed these nine residents over a period of a few years, following their lives, sometimes from birth...more

like · see review

Mar 13, 2010 Richard Gazala rated it 4 of 5 stars

Cats are said to have nine lives because they're popularly purported to be more tenacious of life than most animals. Dan Baum titled his excellent book "Nine Lives" both because it details the pre- and post-Katrina true stories of nine very disparate New Orleanians, and as a tribute to a city that clings to life with feline tenacity despite powerful forces continually arrayed against its survival. In the face of impending if not inevitable disasters repeatedly flung at the city by nature or man,...more

1 like · like · see review

Feb 15, 2010 jillian rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was part of my "Perspectives on New Orleans" weekend. I read "Calla Lily Ponder" right before this book, and needed something a little more gritty to dispel the too-sweet vision of the Crescent City. "Nine Lives" follows nine individuals, and their loved ones and families, through New Orleans, in the years between Betsy and Katrina. Two life defining hurricanes; nine lives significantly changed by them. The writing of this book is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the subje...more

1 like · like · see review

May 27, 2009 Joyce added it

Shelves: librarybook

A beautiful, life-affirming portrait of nine natives of New Orleans: a community leader from the Ninth Ward, a transsexual bar owner, a thug, the wife of the Big Chief of Mardi Gras Indians, the hard-partying coroner, the Uptown head of Rex, a woman who longs for a white picket-fence life, a high-school band leader, and a cop. Together they make up the fabric of a community unique in the United States, entirely consumed by food, music, dance, spectacle, and nightlife to the exclusion of almost a...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 21, 2010 ICPL Staff Picks added it

Shelves: john, nonfiction, staff-picks-blog

Author Dan Baum spend two thirds of this book introducing his nine subjects, intercutting back and forth, and making the reader care about them. So when Hurricane Katrina finally disrupts their lives, it has more impact than news stories that show the bigger picture.

We have a cross-section of New Orleans portrayed here–an aging playboy who’s also a parish coroner, two exemplary poor black men, a hard-ass cop, a transvestite, a thug, a poor black woman who dreams of living a "normal" life, an upt...more

like · see review

Apr 15, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: may-june-2009

Since 2005, Hurricane Katrina and its immediate effects on New Orleans have been documented in numerous books, such as Breach of Faith, ***1/2 Nov/Dec 2006, and The Great Deluge, ***1/2 Nov/Dec 2006. What Dan Baum accomplishes in Nine Lives, though, is more than a time line of events. Critics unanimously praised the author's approach and style, and they compared Baum's effort to the documentary work of Studs Terkel and John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, even if, at times, hi

...more

like · see review

Mar 01, 2013 Kristen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: best-non-fiction, favorites

Tragically inspiring, heartbreakingly uplifting and incredibly powerful. If I didn't already have a love-affair with New Orleans verging on obsession, this beautiful bio of a beseiged but unbowed city would most certainly have taken me over that edge.

The author has told the story of this unique and magical city through following nine New Orleanians from Hurricane Betsey in 1965 through Katrina, and into the aftermath. It was a very bittersweet book to read, because you get to know these diverse...more Tragically inspiring, heartbreakingly uplifting and incredibly powerful. If I didn't already have a love-affair with New Orleans verging on obsession, this beautiful bio of a beseiged but unbowed city would most certainly have taken me over that edge.

The author has told the story of this unique and magical city through following nine New Orleanians from Hurricane Betsey in 1965 through Katrina, and into the aftermath. It was a very bittersweet book to read, because you get to know these diverse "characters" - and really, how could New Orleanians possibly be anything less?? - and you become attached to them, knowing full well what devastating circumstances are lying in wait for them.

Having watched the coverage of Katrina when it happened, and being horrified and infuriated by the colossal ineptitude and corruption of the people responsible to help New Orleans get back some semblance of normalcy, it gutted me all over again to live through it with these people who I became very attached to in reading their stories.

That said, the stories of these marvellous people - people whose lives are so completely different from any frame of reference in mine - reconfimed yet again why this city and it's citizens enthrall and fascinate me and the thousands of other people who have visited through the years. Their dignity, grace, unstoppable fortitude and determination to re-build their beloved city against unfathomable obstacles - particularly in the Lower Ninth Ward where most of the people in the book lived - is beyond inspiring.

While those of us who are not from New Orleans will probably never truly understand the unique, almost magical world they and their city represent, we can honour that magic by taking the wrenching journey author Dan Baum takes us on by introducing us to these phenomenal people, and letting us experience - if only briefly - what it's like to be a New Orleanian. Believe me - it's a journey well worth taking.

One of the most beautiful and emotional books I've ever read, and highly, HIGHLY recommended!!(less)

like · see review

Dec 27, 2010 Stacy rated it 5 of 5 stars

There is so much about New Orleans that is unique, and there are many people that are not aware of what this country and world would be missing without it. I hope that people read this book and get a glimpse of how rich and essential the culture of cities like New Orleans are to creating what we are as a country. It is just as important to have New Orleans as it is to have San Francisco, Chicago, Boston or Miami.

The writing intertwines the multiple stories so well, and helps you to see how the d...more

like · see review

Aug 21, 2011 Kalen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-reads

Stunning. If you read only one book about New Orleans, read this one. Baum has been compared to Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote and I would agree with both of those comparisons. His writing is so lush, so vivid, that you feel like you are right there in New Orleans as the stories unfold.

Nine different narratives are woven together, beginning in 1965 with Hurricane Betsy. Some of the reviews I read before I picked up the book complained that Nine Lives isn't more focused on Katrina--it's only the la...more

3 likes · like · see review

Nov 05, 2010 Mark Dodson rated it 4 of 5 stars

An outstanding book that chronicles the lives of nine New Orleans residents over 40 years from the 1965 hurricane to Katrina in 2005. It moves thru the years chronologically, randomly covering events or situations that occur, and how they're impacted by where they fall in the local culture and social order of things. Also mixed in is a good bit of background of the local traditions, such as the hows and whys of Mardi Gras and how it comes together every year.

There are many surprises along the wa...more

like · see review

Apr 05, 2010 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Nine Lives by Dan Baum follows nine people who experienced Hurricane Betsy in New Orleans and lived through the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
It is a difficult book to follow since the people are not taken through the experience one by one, but are mixed back and forth. Still, their stories emphasize the tragedy and loss caused by Katrina and the difficulty in trying to put lives back together. Some succeed and some do not.
It also tells the story of the failure of the governments, local an...more Nine Lives by Dan Baum follows nine people who experienced Hurricane Betsy in New Orleans and lived through the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
It is a difficult book to follow since the people are not taken through the experience one by one, but are mixed back and forth. Still, their stories emphasize the tragedy and loss caused by Katrina and the difficulty in trying to put lives back together. Some succeed and some do not.
It also tells the story of the failure of the governments, local and national, of following through with aid and rebuilding assistance and the effect it had on those who had lost everything. This is an emotional roller coaster that I won't soon forget.

The experience of being moved from New Orleans to Tennessee. Excerpt: "They treated us good at the airport. Gave us toothbrushes, soap. Had soldiers coming around handing out sandwiches. They sat us out at Gate C-5 for hours and hours, but it was all right...
"Finally they put us on a plane, a regular airline plane because they'd run out of Army planes. The whole time, they wouldn't tell us where we were going. "You'll know when you get there," they said, but what kind of shit is that? Some people said, "No, I ain't going," and the soldiers and police and all, they just said, "Oh yes you are. Like we was under communism or some shit. Put us all on that plane with dogs all up and down the aisle, people crying. We flew I don't know how long... When we come to a stop, the door opens and this white man gets on. He's wearing a suit and tie all buttoned up, and it's like five o'clock in the morning. He looks like a preacher. I look back to see what it is he is looking at, and oh Lordy Jesus, that plane was full of stinking crazy-looking niggers. We got dogs, we got cats. We got that dude with his motherfucking hedgehog. One dude, with the big gold grille, had a big-ass boa constrictor around his neck. This little white dude in the suit, he must have thought his world had about ended. The best of New Orleans delivered up fresh to his doorstep! But I'll tell you, he was cool. He smiled like he was on a game show. Said, "I'm the mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, and I'm here to welcome you to my city." (less)

like · see review

Apr 22, 2013 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

A few years ago I suggested a book group book about cities recovering from disasters. My fellow bookies groaned. "Nooooooo! Katrina fatigue" was the consensus response.

Still I felt obligated to read Nine Lives as the author is a neighbor and slight acquaintance. A couple of things held me back. One was ... Katrina fatigue. Also I had never visited New Orleans and regretted that I missed my chance before it was swept away by a Cat 5 hurricane, broken levees, polluted floodwaters, failed policies...more A few years ago I suggested a book group book about cities recovering from disasters. My fellow bookies groaned. "Nooooooo! Katrina fatigue" was the consensus response.

Still I felt obligated to read Nine Lives as the author is a neighbor and slight acquaintance. A couple of things held me back. One was ... Katrina fatigue. Also I had never visited New Orleans and regretted that I missed my chance before it was swept away by a Cat 5 hurricane, broken levees, polluted floodwaters, failed policies.

The reason I never visited NOLA was I harbored a deep suspicion that it was a cartoon, a failed city hiding behind a Mardi Gras mask. Sort of like Santa Fe and its adobe Conoco station and tiny, cutesy, contrived core engulfed in a sea of low-rent sprawl. That was my prejudice.

Ok, that's a lot of background.

I finally went to New Orleans a month ago and was swept away by its depth and complexity. In a city that was 80 percent underwater, decaying for generations, still plagued by corrupt government, lingering segregation, terrible numbers for health, education and crime, and a limp local economy, more than 80 percent have moved back.

Poor blacks and white exiled to Baton Rouge or Houston clawed to get back to a semblance of their lives in an unpainted shotgun house. They have been joined by an influx of young musicians and entrepreneurs, some of whom came to rebuild homes as volunteers and just stayed. Rich whites re-invested in stately homes that are really so much termite fodder. We biked all over the city and found new vitality everywhere.

It turns out that Bourbon Street is the cartoon, but it is engulfed by richly layered multi-part novel.

During a brass/hip hop concert in Congo Square, I stood among thousands of dancing New Orleaneans (?) and said to my daughter, "Do any other residents love their city as much as this?" She shrugged and replied, "Maybe New York?"

So I came back to Nine Lives to understand why. I was rewarded with a deep look inside the city over a generation. Katrina is just the climax. The book is beautifully researched and written like a fine novel. As I past journalist I can appreciate the time Dan Baum has taken to recreate scenes (some 50 years old as the book begins with Hurricane Betsy in 1965) with a high degree of nuance, dialogue and insight. He captures the poetry of everyday people, including cops, grifters, band leaders, a track repairman on the St. Charles lines, the King of Carnival, and the unforgettable Frank Minyard, the trumpet-playing coroner who waited a week for Katrina's casualties to show up in his provisional morgue.

If you've been put off from reading Nine Lives by Katrina fatigue, go read Nine Lives now. It's just good literature. If you haven't been to New Orleans, don't wait your whole life like I did. (less)

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 26, 2010 Neil rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was not entirely what I expected. There was much more about the lives of Baum's nine subjects before Katrina then I expected there to be, and as there stories built I found myself completely fascinated. Some of the subjects like the uptown organizer Billy Grace and the jazz-playing coroner Frank Minyard were a little more opaque than others. Anthony Wells was ultimately unsympathetic to me. But the high school bandleader Wilbert Rawlins Jr., the transsexual Joanne Guidos, the union leader R...more

like · see review

Aug 06, 2011 Lili rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Katia, Ken

Shelves: from-the-library

In preparation for an upcoming overnight in New Orleans, I wanted to read something contemporary and multi-dimensional that acknowledged the reality of Katrina without being simply a rant about mismanagement, mistreatment, poverty, segregation, etc. Ideally, I was looking for something like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The City of Falling Angels, but set in New Orleans. After an hour or two of reading comments and reviews of various New Orleans books on Goodreads, I decided to see...more In preparation for an upcoming overnight in New Orleans, I wanted to read something contemporary and multi-dimensional that acknowledged the reality of Katrina without being simply a rant about mismanagement, mistreatment, poverty, segregation, etc. Ideally, I was looking for something like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and The City of Falling Angels, but set in New Orleans. After an hour or two of reading comments and reviews of various New Orleans books on Goodreads, I decided to see if I could find Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans in my local library.

I loved this book, perhaps even more so than John Berendt's books, for its portrayal of people, its sense of place and its insight into unique pockets of society. At least the first two-thirds were spent developing the characters' lives after Hurricane Betsy in 1965 in short interlaced vignettes (usually less than three pages each). When Hurricane Katrina hits, the stories continue in the same style of vignettes through 2008 (the book was published 2009). It is a powerful way to show what happened and how it affected a variety of different people, without preaching or ranting. Although the vignettes are predominately based on author interviews, there is absolutely no author presence in the book, which I find pretty amazing. It is only in the Afterword that the author describes how he met each of the nine protagonists, the effort he expended to elicit/edit their stories and (of course) the academic research he undertook to ensure that the vignettes were grounded in the proper context. The bibliography was amazing in its breadth and depth.

One warning: I was extremely fortunate to have read this book almost straight through while on vacation. Because of number of characters and some of the similar elements between their stories, it could be a very different (and perhaps bad) experience to read an hour at a time in the evenings. I'd imagine that it may be frustrating to keep the people, places and circumstances straight when only read in short bursts, especially early on when you aren't as "invested" in what happens next to each of the people. Similarly, I don't think this would be a good audio book, unless it was possible to listen to it in a fairly solid block (like a drive to New Orleans).(less)

1 like · like · see review

Aug 18, 2010 Lena rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Lena by: Harper's article by author

Shelves: non-fiction

Nine Lives is a powerful and moving portrait of the city of New Orleans as told through the life histories of nine very different residents. The story begins with the reaction of a 15-year old Ninth Ward resident to the 1965 devastation of Hurricane Betsy and moves through the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina and beyond.

Among the other people profiled in the book are a wealthy uptown man with an active historical presence in Mardi Gras, an ambitious black woman determined to escape her child...more

4 likes · like · see review

Feb 23, 2013 Lacey rated it 2 of 5 stars

At first I didn’t understand why I was struggling so much to read Nine Lives. I now know the problem- I’m not invested in all the characters. I find myself breezing through a few of the sections, just wanting to move on to the next one, whatever that may be. While I truly believe every person has a story, it feels as if Baum is dragging each story out. I felt myself waiting and waiting for the plot to pick up. I also found Baum's descriptive writing a little much for me. He described some things...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 18, 2011 Brennan rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was brilliant. Studs Terkel meets George Packer, in a way, as it's more than oral history and more than reporting. Nine Lives is profoundly humanistic, and doesn't judge the decisions made by the people it follows, but shows them at their day to day best and worst.

By using nine people to tell the story of New Orleans, Baum lets the reader get to know the city in an accessible, intimate way - more intimate than any other book on the city I've found. I've always loved New Orleans so was pred...more

like · see review

Dec 04, 2009 Ron Baird rated it 5 of 5 stars

Author Dan Baum has written a wonderful book that should be considered the Great American Novel for this century. And it's not even fiction; it's true. Let me explain: The book profiles the lives of nine people in New Orleans who lived through both Hurricanes Betsy (1969) and Katrina (2005).

The reason it should be considered fiction is that it has the narrative drive of the best fiction, engrossing readers in the intimate lives of these characters who are fascinating in their own right, all but...more

like · see review

Mar 03, 2012 Brenna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dan Baum was sent to New Orleans after Katrina to cover the disaster for the New Yorker, but ended up realizing the only way to really write about it was to put it in the context of the character of the city and her people. His ultimate strategy was to focus on the lives of 9 New Orleanians and tell the stories of their lives, before and after Katrina. The result is one of the best portraits of New Orleans I've ever read. Baum's writing is breathtakingly beautiful and he treats his subjects with...more

like · see review

Aug 14, 2012 Molly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, have-written-review

This isn't so much a Katrina story as a New Orleans story. It actually starts with Hurricane Betsy in the 60s and follows nine characters lives in different parts of town, with wholly different backgrounds, as they make their way through life in colorful, crazy, challenging New Orleans. It ends with the next apocalyptic storm, Katrina, as if the storms were bookends to the story. Dan Baum is by no means a native - in fact, he had only come down here to cover the story of Katrina for The New York...more

1 like · like · see review

May 10, 2010 Cecelia rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book! The author, Dan Baum, moved down to New Orleans after Katrina to write stories for the New Yorker about the rebuilding efforts. He ended up writing this book which tracks (as the title indicates) nine lives in New Orleans from just after Hurrican Betsy, which left the lower Ninth Ward flooded in 1965, to a couple of years after Katrina. The people he follows come from different backgrounds and their experiences of New Orleans are as completely different as you might expect. My...more

like · see review

Jun 16, 2010 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars

A pageturner about 9 real people and their lives in New Orleans, in some cases over a period of decades (Betsy => Katrina), and then what happened to them after Katrina. I had a hard time putting it down, and the funny thing is that Katrina didn't hit until at least 2/3rds of the way through the book, but I was totally riveted by these people's lives anyway, and the different ways in which they were embedded into New Orleans' culture. I almost forgot the book was going to include Katrina. I a...more

like · see review

Aug 03, 2011 Ada-Marie added it

I read this book because the author is speaking about it at a fundraiser that I am attending, and it is not subject matter that I probably would have chosen otherwise, and I am so glad that I read it because it was a TERRIFIC book. It follows nine residents of New Orleans from the late 1960s through present day, with Hurricanes Betsy and Katrina as its proverbial bookends. The author has a very concise writing style that is really enjoyable to read and the book is similar in tone to "Midnight in...more

like · see review

Aug 03, 2010 James rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: character-studies, culture-and-politics, death-dying-killing-bereavement, entertainment-and-recreation, history, music, memoirs, regional, relationships, spirituality-and-or-religion

Powerful, fascinating, and at times achingly sad - the author walks the reader along with nine people living in New Orleans through years - in some cases decades - of their lives, leading up to Katrina and its aftermath. After a while (the events are in chronological order, weaving back and forth between lives, and about two thirds of the book covers the nine New Orleanians' lives before and leading up to Katrina), I felt I'd gotten to know them, and knowing, as they could not, that Katrina was...more

like · see review

Feb 12, 2009 Judith rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone I know

I was incredibly fortunate to have gotten a galley print of this book. The scheduled release date is 2/17/09.

Nine Lives is a non-fiction book about nine different people in New Orleans, spanning 40+ years. The two major events that bracket this time frame are Hurricane Betsey and Hurricane Katrina. However, although these are important events in the book, they are not the entire focus of the book. The story chronicles these nine individuals from different parts of the city and different strata....more

like · see review

May 21, 2010 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars

It was an absolute thrill to read this book. Man, was it intense. (I think the cover art is a mistake, but whatever...) The author was in NOLA a lot after the storms, and traced these nine real peoples' lives from Hurricane Betsy through Hurricane Katrina. So first, major kudos to him for developing this brave written form. It worked out splendidly. And second, major kudos to him for introducing me to these people who really embody New Orleans' spirit.

I thought I knew New Orleans. I thought I k...more

like · see review

Oct 06, 2009 MaryHelen rated it 4 of 5 stars

A reporter for THE NEW YORKER, the author went to New Orleans to write about the city's response to Hurricane Katrina. He became immersed in the question of why New Orleanians (and others who continue to move there) are so devoted to a place with a reputation for being corrupt, improverished, and violent? Through interviews with nine individuals, he captures memories of New Orleans beginning in 1965 and through the Hurricane Katrina disaster, with the nine lives serving as windows into every dem...more

like · see review

Jan 03, 2013 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved this story about one of my favorite cities. It is gritty and real and captures the essence and richness of the culture of New Orleans. It showcased the good, the bad and the ugly of the city, from the poorest of the poor to the wealthy privileged. The account of Hurricane Katrina was achingly hard to read but a good first hand insight of what the people really experienced. We all watched the news before, during and after the storm but these personal experiences shared in the book were so...more

like · see review

Aug 13, 2009 Liz rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nola

Hard to keep track of the characters at the beginning of the book, by the middle you feel like you've known them all their lives. When Tootie Montana passed away at the end of part 2, I realized that I was a maybe little more emotionally involved with these folks than I realized ... and then it hit me that I hadn't even gotten to the "Katrina" part of their lives yet.

Dan Baum was at Octavia Book in New Orleans back in February of these year. C-Span clip below. He got some heat for some of his p...more

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 92 93 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Thank you!	2	26	May 29, 2009 01:53pm

combine
Other Editions (5)

More editions...

Videos About This Book

Add a comment

Genres

Non Fiction

65 users

History

19 users

Biography

12 users

Book Club

8 users

Travel

5 users

Autobiography > Memoir

5 users

American > Southern

4 users

History > American History

3 users

Race

2 users

Literature > American

2 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Dan Baum

Dan Baum has been a staff writer for The New Yorker, for which he covered Hurricane Katrina. He's been a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, The Asian Wall Street Journal, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He is the author of Citizen Coors: An American Dynasty and Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure. He has written numerous articles for such national magazines as...more

More about Dan Baum...

Books by Dan Baum

Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure

Citizen Coors: A Grand Family Saga of Business, Politics, and Beer

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Nine Lives: Death...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from Nine Lives: Death and ...

“Other people's children went off to college, which for years Ronald had interpreted as a positive thing. Lately, though, he wasn't so sure. The children who went off to college hardly ever came back. It was as though the hard work of getting that college degree bent them out of shape, focused them too much on their own personal achievement. Once you got that degree, it was all about getting ahead in that monetized struggle, and they forgot the community that raised them. Ooh, live in the Lower Nine; not me. Ooh, do a day's work with your hands; I won't touch that. The neighborhood gained something when one of its children went off to become a doctor or an engineer, but it lost something, too.” — 1 person liked it

“But this home over here: it needed paint but had flowers neatly planted all the way around it. That one over there had a tire swing out front, tied to a fat magnolia tree. Behind another, a lush vegetable garden. You got to fight not to give into despair, he told himself. You got to see the good that's mixed in with the bad.” — 1 person liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans
avg rating	preview: Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans Goodreads rating: 4.14 (1326 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5501146-nine-lives?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320389767l/5501146.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5501146-nine-lives?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum[/url]

Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website