Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Jan 28, 2009

Lynette rated it:

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 welco More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 02, 2011

Colleen rated it:

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, More...

0 comments like

Mar 13, 2010

Richard rated it:

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 natu More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Feb 15, 2010

jillian rated it:

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 More...

4 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 27, 2009

Joyce added it

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 More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Jul 21, 2010

ICPL added it

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 "no More...

0 comments like

Apr 15, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine rated it:

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...

1 comment like

Dec 27, 2010

Stacy rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like

Aug 21, 2011

Kalen rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 05, 2010

Mark rated it:

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 al More...

0 comments like

Apr 05, 2010

Nancy rated it:

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 governm More...

0 comments like

Jun 26, 2010

Neil rated it:

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...

0 comments like

Aug 06, 2011

Lili rated it:

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 s More...

0 comments like

Aug 18, 2010

Lena rated it:

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 esc More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 18, 2011

Brennan rated it:

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 Orle More...

0 comments like

Dec 04, 2009

Ron rated it:

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 More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 10, 2010

Cecelia rated it:

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. More...

0 comments like

Jun 16, 2010

Katie rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like

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 "Midn More...

0 comments like

Aug 03, 2010

James rated it:

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...

0 comments like

Feb 12, 2009

Judith rated it:

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 differ More...

1 comment like

May 21, 2010

Kate rated it:

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 Orlea More...

0 comments like

Oct 06, 2009

MaryHelen rated it:

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 d More...

0 comments like

Aug 13, 2009

Liz rated it:

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 s More...

0 comments like

Jun 21, 2009

Stevie rated it:

I liked this book a great deal. Baum has long been a favorite nonfiction writer of mine and his Katrina reporting for the New Yorker is great. So I was predisposed to like this book. The structure was great, particularly his decision to look at the lives of his nine characters as a whole, rather than just how their responses to Katrina. That being said (and this is why it's getting four stars instead of five), I was more interested in their responses to Katrina and how they've dealt with the aft More...

0 comments like

May 27, 2011

Shauna rated it:

Dan Baum follows the lives of several very diverse people who live in and love New Orleans. This is not simply a Katrina story, although that is one aspect of their lives. Their stories begin long before Katrina hits, and although "the storm" brought many changes, it didn't change their love for their city. Loved the memories that were shared of the New Orleans of long ago. I looked Tootie Montana up on youtube. Unbelievable costumes. He's definitely irreplaceable. I liked the r More...

0 comments like

Aug 03, 2011

Vern rated it:

This book did not live up to my expectations. I did like it but it was just 'ok'. I despised the author's writing style and the book itself was a difficult read due to all the back and forth between the nine characters. It drove me crazy, which is probably why I could not wait to finish this book. At the end my exact thoughts were, "This is it? I waited for the finish line and this is what I get?"

All in all,it provided an avid description of life in New Orleans pre and pos More...

0 comments like

Feb 21, 2011

Patti rated it:

I loved this book about real people of every social level in New Orleans. I was born in NO and have lived here all my life. It shows what a multicultural and unique city we live in. The people are extremely honest with their thoughts and emotions. I loved following the people as they walked the stated streets, visiting relatives or friends. Mr. Baum did a great job writing, sometimes it almost felt like reading poetry, the way he describes the city, the sights, the sounds and the smells. Ne More...

0 comments like

Feb 20, 2009

Becky rated it:

This book was tough for me to get into. I'm not much of a history buff, so the older stories in the beginning did not hold my attention well. However, I found that I was really getting more and more attached to a couple of the characters whose lives were being portrayed. As these people aged, grew, changed jobs and then suffered through Hurricane Katrina, I became even more interested in who they became and the horror that they had to witness. I would love to meet Wil and Belinda. The hardships More...

0 comments like

Mar 09, 2010

Jane rated it:

Dan Baum follows the lives of nine disparate New Orleanians -- from a bedraggled ex-convict to a high society white lawyer -- over four decades and bracketed by two spectacular hurricanes to demonstrate how life was fundamentally changed, if not completely destroyed, by Hurricane Katrina. While many books have covered the storm and its effects on the Big Easy, none have focused as sharply on the individuals injured, killed and left homeless by the hurricane that leveled the Gulf Coast -- and ho More...

0 comments like