Nine Lives
Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans

Nine Live is an excellent story of New Orleans as seen through these nine individuals and the lives they touch. As much as I have read about the effects of Katrina on the city and its people, this was eye-opening. And that is because of Dan Baum's reporting, his listening, and the access the many pe......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......more

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......more

Nine Lives is the gripping tale of forty odd years of life and death in New Orleans bracketed by two hurricanes - Hurricane Betsy in September 1965 and Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. The story is told in a memoir narrative style, seeing life and death through the eyes of nine incredibly interesti......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......more