Dan BaumReseñas

This oral history of of nine New Orleans residents, bracketed by hurricanes Betsy, in 1965, and Katrina, in 2005 is a solidly entertaining, (Big) easy read. Baum was reporting on Katrina for the New Yorker when he met and interviewed these folks, so it's a fairly eclectic bunch, from a rich white uptown guy to the city coroner to the wife of Mardi Gras Indian royalty to a transgender bar owner, and a few more. But he seems faithful to the voices, and patches together enough from other sources to keep it hopping. A good slice of time and place.

Nine Lives

Once upon a time there was a young assistant editor living in New York City. The editor that this assistant editor assisted left the company just a week before the editor was to have gone on a trip to New Orleans to attend a conference where she would recruit authors. With the hotel booked and the conference entrance fee paid for, someone had to go. And lo, the lowly assistant editor found herself on a surprise trip to New Orleans, where she had wanted to go ever since heard the “they used an alligator as a cannon” song about the War of 1812 when she was little. But that’s not relevant to the book.

The part relevant to the book features me hustling over to the French Quarter at 5 PM on the dot to fit in as much sightseeing as I can, picking random side streets to wander down in search of shops and galleries that hadn’t closed yet, and stumbling upon The Kitchen Witch bookshop. This charming store is what my house would look like if I didn’t have a roommate: books everywhere, knickknacks both antique and just plain silly scattered among the shelves and piles. The shop, it turned out, featured cookbooks, but it also had a selection of books about NOLA and by NOLA residents.

Nine Lives jumped out because that’s the book that Jack Varjak writes in the Breakfast at Tiffany’s movie (don’t even start…). To my delight, this book turned out to be just what I was looking for, a perfect souvenir for someone who didn’t really get time to see New Orleans.

When I bought the book, the shop owner and I chatted a bit, and she told me that she’d been amazed to find out how much in the book was true—that after she’d read it, she started hearing about the nine people whose lives are explored in depth in this book. I owe her an email to tell that, well, I absolutely loved this book!

The best part is that you can read it however you want. Me, I’m a beginning-to-end kind of person. My roommate and my grandma picked up the book and flipped to any old section, since the lives are broken up into short vignettes of anywhere from a paragraph to several pages. The author warns that you might have trouble keeping track of everyone, which is entirely possible—though I only had to flip back twice to remember who someone was. (I consider any story’s “it’s okay if you’re confused” to be a personal offense and as soon as I see it, I’m determined not to be.)

Thing is, this is exactly my kind of book: dozens of characters, from the nine main characters to the people in their lives; a variety of cultures in close contact with each other; complicated socioeconomic and political interactions; and covering decades. And the best part? It’s all true (even if not always factually accurate).

Folks, this is the kind of book I would aspire to write if I wasn’t so lazy. When I write at all these days, I stick with fantasy so I can avoid research wherever possible.

Quote Roundup
I’m probably going to run out of room here, which I haven’t done since Paradise Lost.If that’s the case, I’ll add a link to the tumblr post at the bottom.

x) Author: Long before [Hurricane Katrina], New Orleans was by almost any metric the worst city in the United States … Yet a poll conducted a few weeks before the storm found that more New Orleanians—regardless of age, race, or wealth—were “extremely satisfied” with their lives than residents of any other American city.
Pretty impressive. I wish more people (myself included) could be so happy in their metrically better circumstances.

13) How a young black man got revenge on a racist white store owner who thought he was shoplifting.
Anthony: I got my little sister’s friends to go in there with their little backpacks after school. Then I go in, making myself the shiftless nigger, and damned if that white man didn’t take the bait and follow two steps behind me everywhere I went. Meanwhile, the girls are stuffing everything they could get their hands on into their little backpacks, stealing that white man’s ass off. Teach him a lesson for stereotyping us.
“But he proved that white guy right!” you say. “That’s not the point,” I whisper.

30) Frank: “Who are they” Frank said, gesturing at the young black men dressed for combat, hustling about with pots of coffee or mops or holding crying children on their laps. “Why, the Black Panthers,” she said, as though any fool would know. “They look scary, but this is what they do—feed breakfast to poor children all over the country.”
Well you certainly don’t learn that in school! Or, well, you don’t if you grow up in predominantly white areas, I shouldn’t speak for everywhere.

35) Billy: He realized he’d never been ignored by a Negro before. Usually, they were either focused on him…or studiously making themselves invisible. … The poor things, he’d said to himself more than once, squirming under the forced cheerfulness of a porter’s greeting or noting the cringing, averted eyes of a busboy. Yet these four men, waiting for their pot to boil, were unembarrassed. Undiminished.
Just so you know, this little white boy was thinking this while he was working in a predominantly black neighborhood where these men live. It’d be interesting to know whether the rich kid in 1969 thought this, or if it was a lesson filtered through memory—rosy retrospection creating a life lesson out of what may have just been an awkward or interesting situation.

I really like the way this book’s style allows readers to encounter different facets of racism. You get the people who are racist jerks pretty much overtly. You get the people railing against white privilege. You get people with the privilege to not really even notice racism. You get the people who just deal with it every day. You get multiple sides of the dice, which is not something you usually see, even when an attempt is being made to represent multiple sides (see, for example, the movie Crash).

38) Frank: “So you won’t let me bring methadone into the jail.”
“No, sir.” They looked at each other.
“Who’s your boss?” Frank asked.
Rabin smiled. “I don’t have a boss. I’m elected.”
Frank leaned across Rabin’s desk. “You motherfucker,” Frank heard himself saying. “I’m going to run against you and take your job.”
Loved this!

105) John: Little by little, his reflection in the mirror became more naturally feminine. They worked with his size instead of against it, changing his look from that of a husky guy trying to to look like a flouncy sexpot to that of a big thirty-nine-year-old woman. They were taking him more seriously as a woman than he’d ever taken himself. He’d been forcing himself into a cartoon caricature. They were applying a woman’s finesse.
I don’t cry for many stories, but my heart did feel a little melty for this scene. The women—part-time and full-time—were so immediately accepting of and welcoming to John, giving him tips and working with his level of comfort to help him figure himself (herself) out. It’s hard to find people so open to strangers, and here John went from having no one to having a whole group of supporters and potential friends in a single evening that’s going to change his life forever. How often do we get to look back on those moments? How many of us have moments as big as this one must have been for John?

132) John: I was delighted to learn that John spent time as a trucker—made me think of a story I wrote a while back about a woman trucker. The snippet of him listening to an instructional tape on how to speak like a woman was another heart-melty moment of happiness for John.

134) Ronald meets a white doctoral student studying the second line parades in NOLA:
She launched into an explanation of what she was about that set Ronald’s head to spinning—something about “contested urban space” and “the commodification of culture.” Ronald settled back and took it in; he liked hearing white people talk. It was like learning another language. Then she was contrasting second lines with “minstrelsy,” and Ronald perked up. He’d had enough of minstrel men.
“What you mean by that?” he asked
“Minstrelsy being exaggerated blackness, cartoon blackness, for the entertainment of whites,” she said. “The second line strikes me as the exact opposite.”
She got it.
Actual proof that two people with wildly different backgrounds can meet and understand each other. The locals’ reactions to the researcher in their midst (what the hey?) made the little cultural anthropologist in me sigh happily.

137) Belinda: “Every guy you find is either married or has a girlfriend.”
“How do you know?”
“When they give you a phone number and it’s one of those cell phones, you know. You find me a guy that gives me his home number, I’ll listen.”
This was in 1996, and it’s practically hilarious now. Almost none of the people I know in New York have landlines, they just rely on their cell phones. Good thing Belinda found love before that cultural shift!

156) I really admire how seriously Belinda treats her young relationship with Wil Rawlins. She’s been through so many bad relationships and so much struggle in her life, she’s not just going to lie back and take punches anymore. She calls his school to confirm his employment and orders a full background check. She sounds like an amazing person—I’d love to meet her.

177) Another milestone in Belinda and Wil’s relationship: a classic missed anniversary. I really loved getting to see their relationship from both sides. They’re two such different people but they work so well together—even when they don’t, even when things fall apart, they still respect each other. It’s good to know there are good people in the world…especially when we have to read Tim’s less-than-polite perspective on, well, anything.

206) Ronald finds out that scholarships are being offered in light of the demolition of an entire lower-income neighborhood—only no one’s advertising the scholarships. He enacts the perfect revenge.
[He] began patrolling the streets of the Lower Nine. Three young men stood on the corner … Ronald W. Lewis pulled up and stepped out. … “Listen. They trying to put one over, offering scholarships without really telling nobody, hoping nobody apply. What we doing here is like snatching two thousand dollars from the city. We got to pick the fruit. They won’t like it, but it’s ours.” Michael stepped forward and picked up a pen. “What do I do?”
Ronald kept it up all week.
Ronald is a wonderful human being. I hope I’m that cool when I’m his age.

231) Tim [thinking for Marie]: That man at the hospital is right. I’m trash. But what else could I be?
I read this whole book and this was honestly the one part that strained credulity for me. This racist cop drives around with the corpse of a black woman in his backseat after Katrina, unable to find a hospital that will take her, and starts to actually think of her as a human being instead of a stupid dead possible criminal. People are rarely so neat. And, ultimately, Time isn’t. He may come to an understanding, he may tell the story of himself coming to an understanding, or this may be fabricated by the author. Who knows? But it’s important that he starts seeing it only to let it go. Because that’s the trap of white privilege that’s so easy to fall into. It’s not a light-switch-flip fix-it.

246-247) Ronald: An hour later, Ronald’s upper arm was sore and swollen. A three-inch tall skull and crossbones, with the legend “RWL 65-05,” glowed against his raw skin. “It’s beautiful,” said the skinny Confederate with the humming needle at Randy’s Fine Line Tattoos.
“These are the bookends of my life. Forty years apart. Betsy and Katrina.”
“What’s the little crown above the R?”
“That means I am king of the plan.” Ronald palpated his achy upper arm. Katrina and Betsy were part of him; he’d wear them like he wore his own black skin. But hurricanes came and went; men planned and built.

265) Billy: “This is my idea. The collective wealth around this table must be in the billions. Why don’t we each of us, personally, pledge a million dollars cash to the recovery. We can go out of this room and announce that we have sixty million dollars cash on hand: the business community’s stake in the recovery. Today.” He leaned on his forearms and looked around the room expectantly.
Nobody spoke, and Scott went on with the meeting.
Oh, this made me FURIOUS! It’s one thing for a bunch of old guys in Washington, so far away, to deny sufficient aid. For a bunch of NOLA business men, though, to hear that and not agree to something—even half a million each would have been a tremendous amount to devote to rebuilding. I hope these cowards are ashamed of themselves at least annually.

266) Frank
It’s awful how much of the Katrina recovery (or lack thereof) news reached/stuck with me when I was a teenager up in Massachusetts, in my happy little haven. I knew NOLA was horrendously neglected, but in this case the government almost seems to have gone out of their way to be extra awful. This isn’t just withholding resources: this is withholding resources to make a deal. Reading this was like a punch in the gut.

267) Frank is another amazing human being.
Buried deep in each [body’s pathologist] report was a line for cause of death, and on each someone had written, “drowning.” …
“Connie, listen to me. A lot of these people died from heat exhaustion, dehydration, stress, and from being without their medication—from neglect, basically. They were abandoned out there. So it’s political, what killed them. … I want all the bodies autopsied.”
“Every one?”
“Every one. These people were left to die like rats.”
Frank needs a hug and a Congressional Medal of Honor.

276) Anthony: [The people in Knoxville, Tennessee] called us looters and refugees. Refugees is from another country. Refugees is from a war zone. I got a Social Security number.
I remember wondering what happened to the people from New Orleans who were scattered across the country after the storm. Now I found out what happened.

293) Billy: The city was cleaving along racial lines in a way he wouldn’t have thought possible. It was as though integration had never happened. The hurt that had welled up with the flood had caught him completely off guard.
Sigh. Of course it did. I wonder if this was an actual new division or just one that was being not just vocalized but broadcasted for the first time. I don’t know, is it better to hope that somehow New Orleans was a little patch of slightly less racism and that Katrina wrecked that as well, or better to think that it was always there and the national attention following Katrina was just the first opportunity those who suffered from racism had to make it known?

298) Joyce: [She paused] before the giant rusted cross made of welded anchor chain, hung with manacles. Father LeDoux had installed it years before: the Tomb of the Unknown Slave. No wonder the archdiocese hated him so much.
Every former Confederate state with a tomb honoring their soldiers at Gettysburg should be required to have a Tomb of the Unknown Slave of equal size and proportion installed in front of their capital building.

Also, how have I not had a quote from Joyce yet? I loved her story because it was her perspective on her larger-than-life husband. The author wrote somewhere that it was refreshing to get her perspective when her husband had held the spotlight for so long, and I like that it adds an extra angle to the book: in and among the third-person stories, we get Anthony’s first-person and Joyce’s third-person with an external focus.

305) Ronald: He couldn’t understand the people who weren’t striving to come back. It was so different from the time after Betsy, when there was no question. Everybody came back and started right in. Forty years after our liberation movement, Ronald thought, and we’re further back than ever.
It was good to have this reminder of Betsy at this point in the book. It was so easy to forget in the awful wake of Katrina that there’d been a hurricane before—maybe not one as big, but still.

321) Author: Chris so thoroughly worked the copy that when the manuscript came back to me I went through Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief—angry that he’d masticated my flawless prose, denial that I’d really have to make such extensive changes, confident I could bargain my way out of most of them, despair that Chris believed so much alternation was necessary, and finally acceptance that he had been right all along. This led to a sixth stage: gratitude.
Can any editor dream of a better description of their hard work?

I liked this a lot. It reminded me, oddly, of George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series, in the way that the author uses various shifting perspectives to describe the culture and mores of modern-day New Orleans. As with Martin's books, the technique can be confusing at first, and I was probably halfway through the book before I felt totally comfortable with who everyone was. The book was riveting, and the many short chapters made it hard to put down; you always think there is time to read just one more.

My only quibble is that I wish more women had been included: only three women (one of them transgendered) among the nine perspectives. That was a little disappointing to me, and I wish Baum had found a way to incorporate more female voices.

This nonfiction book was slow going at first, but after a while I was completely pulled in. It tells the story of nine different people in New Orleans over the course of many decades and it culminates with Hurricane Katrina. Their stories are wildly different, a cop, young black girl, and Indian, a transgender person, a local politician, but all of them are part of the city in one way or another. It reminds me so much of Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil. I loved the detailed descriptions of their worlds and the writing brought the city of New Orleans alive for me. Each of them sees their city in a different way. Those points of view painted a fuller picture of the iconic location. It's a perfect book to read before visiting!

The Nine: Ronald Lewis, Billy Grace, Belinda Jenkins, Wilbert Rawlins Jr., Frank Minyard, Joyce Montana, John / Joann Guidos, Anthony Wells , and Tim Bruneau

2nd Amendment musings from a lifelong liberal gun owner's perspective. Quite informative.

This book was interesting to read. It was written by a Democrat who happens to like guns. (He must be the one! :) ) His experiences throughout the book in traveling around the country and exploring different parts of the gun culture were fun to read about, although bearing no resemblance to my own experiences. I kept feeling throughout the book that he was missing the big picture overall, though. He wants gun owners to try to be nicer about things and yield "just a little". He does note that gun owners are vilified in this country and charged with having the blood of innocents on their hands, but doesn't seem to understand why that would make a class of people angry.

I liked this a lot. It reminded me, oddly, of George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series, in the way that the author uses various shifting perspectives to describe the culture and mores of modern-day New Orleans. As with Martin's books, the technique can be confusing at first, and I was probably halfway through the book before I felt totally comfortable with who everyone was. The book was riveting, and the many short chapters made it hard to put down; you always think there is time to read just one more.

My only quibble is that I wish more women had been included: only three women (one of them transgendered) among the nine perspectives. That was a little disappointing to me, and I wish Baum had found a way to incorporate more female voices.

This nonfiction book about New Orleans and Katrina explores the subject through the view points of nine New Orleanians. It depicts their lives from Hurricane Betsy in 1965 through Katrina. Among the individuals with whom we become intimate: a streetcar track repairman, the transvestite owner of a bar and his ex-wife, a former Rex, King of Carnival, the wife of the most well-known Mardi Gras Indian, a cop, the New Orleans coronor, the bandmaster of one of New Orleans public schools famous marching bands, a criminal, a 9th ward woman seeking to better herself. Nine Lives does what City of Refuge did not do: it conveys what life was like in New Orleans pre-Katrina--how unique and varied it was, and why so many people would not live anywhere else in the world. For this it is well-worth the read.

I was particularly taken with some of the events disclosed by Frank Minyard the New Orleans coronor. He details the days of waiting in the makeshift morgue for the bodies of victims to be delivered. First the 82nd airborne volunteered to retrieve the bodies, but was denied authorization to do so by higher-ups. Then the National Guard volunteered. Same thing. Then the Louisiana State Patrol. Same story. When a representative of SCI, the largest funeral home operation in America, showed up, Minyard finally got it: 'Let me see if I've got this straight. Dead people rot on the streets of New Orleans for a week and a half so the feds can sign a private contract?' Minyard also refused to let officials take the easy way out and list the cause of death as 'drowning,' as the deaths were initially classified. 'A lot of these people died from heat exhaustion, dehydration, stress, from being without their medications--from neglect basically. They were abandoned out there.'

Nine Lives is skillfully written--no long lists here. While, as in the case of Minyard, each of the individuals discusses their Katrina experiences, Katrina and its aftermath is not the focus of this book. It is a deft exploration of why New Orleans matters.

This was an excellent study of the unique city of New Orleans. Nine very different individuals were the focus and all recounted life before Katrina (most decades before it), during the storm, and soon afterwards. Their love of their city regardless of their economic/social standing shone through.
The presentation of this book is similar to John Berendt's Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil and Studs Terkel's Working and The Good War.

I thought this book was interesting and entertaining. The author is a liberal democrat who has always liked guns, they fascinate him. He explores a lot of gun culture and I think does a pretty good job of giving a lay person a view of "gun guys". He goes through the process of getting a concealed carry permit and carries for an entire year. He discusses several gun shows he stopped by, gun stores he fell into, and online gun forums. It was a fun read.

3.5 stars

The author is a journalist who was in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, where he met some interesting people... people he later decided to write about. This tells the stories of nine different residents of New Orleans, starting in the 1960s and continues through and past Katrina to 2007. Some of the people include: a police officer, a doctor/coroner, a high school band teacher, a pregnant teenage girl who really wanted to go to college, a man who grew up in and stayed in the poor Lower Ninth Ward, a transgender woman, and more.

Like with short stories, I found some of the people's stories more interesting than others. It was a bit tricky to follow at first, as it went in chronological order, so it switched back and forth between all the people, plus it moved forward, sometimes years at a time, when it came back to someone we'd previously read about. Probably no surprise that I found it picked up with the hurricane about half way through the book – in some cases, I found myself more interested in some of the characters whom I hadn't been as interested in previously. Overall, though, I'm rating this “good”.½

I CANNOT BEGIN TO EXPRESS JUST HOW GREAT THIS BOOK ACTUALLY IS!!! I JUST FINISHED. Next time I visit and walk the beautiful streets of New Orleans, I will do so with much more understanding of what this city REALLY SUFFERED through during those long hours, days, and weeks after Katrina. I will smile at each stranger I see, knowing a little bit more about their heritage and why those that remained in New Orleans remained so when they were asked to evacuate. When I walk along the magnificent Riverwalk on the Mississippi River, I will forever hear the written words of Dan Baum and the stories told to him by nine lives that loved New Orleans more than I can ever understand. I will see what it is that they wanted me to see from the stories that they wanted to tell.

Amazing!!

An investigation into gun culture in America. The reporter spends time inside the gun culture and tours the country being easily identified as a member. He analyses the divide between the two groups, and many of the problems of the gun owners are explained. They are ageing, and their lives often came a good deal short of their expectations. The effect of actually wearing a weapon, concealed or openly, are shown, and such effects can be far more far reaching than one expects. The statistics are also more equivocal than one might expect....And the USA may have reached the tipping point of it being a good idea to rely on one's own set of weapons for self-defense. But it is chilling to discover the immense holes in the social fabric that the last twenty years have torn.

I deplore stereotypes, but I'll admit to being what I perceive to be a typical liberal. I didn't grow up using guns. I've never been tempted to hunt (though various relatives do). And I have a knee-jerk reaction when the term "assault weapon" comes up.
But real issues are never as black-and-white as we would like them to be. This book exposed me to various aspects of America's gun culture, and I can understand why all sorts of activities that don't interest me absolutely fascinate others.
The author (who describes himself as a New York City Jew who was totally lost at summer camp until he discovered he had a talent for target shooting) is a gun collector and occasional shooter who managed to get a book proposal accepted to examine our country's love affair with guns. This book details his year-long exploration, visiting gun stores and gun shows across the country and delving into related areas. Hunting. Machine gun enthusiasts (yes, it's possible to obtain a license for them). Gun collecting. Competitive target shooting. He even visits an armorer who rents firearms to movie studios for use in their films (and carefully supervises their use).
As part of his research, he applies for and receives a CCW permit and carries a concealed handgun most of the time for several months.
Finally, near the end of his oddyssey, he visits the headquarters of the National Rifle Association and of the Brady Center to End Handgun Violence. At the end of the book, he presents his take on the pros and cons of various aspects of gun control.
It's both a fascinating and an illuminating read.

Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans tracks the stories of nine people living in different parts of New Orleans and experiencing the different lives that the city has to offer between two major hurricanes that swept through the city, each devastating the city but ultimately having results vastly different results. Just a few of the colorful people whom we meet are Frank Minyard a gynecologist who after achieving the heights of riches and a comfortable life wants do do more meaningful work so and so decides to become the county coroner; young Belinda dreams of being able to escape the predestined road of motherhood to be the first in her family to attend college; John Guidos the former store owner who was born to be a person his body hasn’t allowed him to be; and Wilbert Rawlins, a band teacher so dedicated to the poverty stricken teens who don’t have families of their own that he almost loses some of the important things in life.

I was drawn in by the wonderful slices of life right away. Baum alternates the stories over the years , and I loved getting to know the people and learning their about their hopes and dreams and see the progress that they made and the setbacks and challenges that they faced. I have been to New Orleans a couple of times and it has so much culture and rich scenery and beauty, but it was so fascinating to learn more and see some of the hidden dimensions of the city that may not be readily apparent to visitors. I learned of the krewes (restrictive social clubs) formed by the different groups in New Orleans, often with all white membership and their battles with the city over participation in Mardi Gras and the Black-Indian celebration which brought communities together and instilled pride in heritage. Some of the lives that Baum follows belong to the different krewes and it is interesting to see their approach to membership in the clubs and how some members feel that they should change to be more accomodating to the times and to outsiders. I read about the New Orleans Police Department and the awesome amount of corruption and scandal that plagued the department for years. I could go on and on about the interesting parts of New Orleans culture that I discovered in this book.

By the time they got to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina I was fully involved in each of the lives presented in Nine Lives, and it made it that much more poignant to truly have an idea of what the stakes were for each person and what the loss meant to their individual dreams and to the lives of their families. Dan Baum conducted extensive research and interviews in writing this book, but that doesn’t detract from the wonderful human element, and none of this story feels dry or inaccessible. He has a way of writing that let’s each person’s character and personality come through. Their individual voices are respected and heard and the book is in their own words as much as possible. I was delighted to get to know the people introduced to me in this book and I celebrated their triumphs at cried at their tragedies. There is a much richer experience here than just learning about the effects of Hurricanes Katrina & Betty . If you love reading about different communities and enjoy getting a glimpse into people’s lives then you will truly enjoy this book.

For starters, I have little to no interest in guns and have generally gravitated to the anti-gun side of the argument, but this book was a paradigm shifter for me; an introduction to all aspects of gun culture presented in a reasoned, sane, humorous, and intelligent fashion. I have a much better understanding of guns, gun people, guns in the media, and the politics behind it all. Each chapter unfolded to reveal a new aspect and another view that I had never considered. If all polarized political issues were presented in such an engaging fashion, we would be living in a more harmonious world. I hope that a lot of people read this one.

Baum is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, except that he loves guns. And he agrees with gun guys that liberal distaste for guns is a matter of taste, since he argues that the effect of guns on crime can’t really be proven. (He has less to say about the effect of guns on suicide and accidental death, where he agrees that gun guys have fallen down in promoting responsibility as a gun owner’s social duty; he argues that social pressure should make poor gun storage socially unacceptable, like smoking at someone else’s house. He doesn’t mention “like driving drunk,” because of course that was both a social and a legal change, though he does suggest that rational gun owners ought to support the criminalization of reckless failure to secure guns.) I feel some sympathy for his ‘don’t target responsible gun owners’ (but for what? What exactly are they being targeted for?) position and for his argument that supporting gun restrictions has put a barrier between many lower-middle-class (white) voters and the Democratic party they should naturally support. But I feel like I’m being asked to make yet another deal with the devil (since the Democrats’ pact with Wall Street has gone so well), and I wondered why in his road trip to talk to gun owners and figure out what was up with them, he never did seek out the irresponsible ones whose kids shoot themselves or other kids. He did randomly encounter a guy who was put in a wheelchair by his own gun (his girlfriend shot him with a gun that he thought didn’t have a bullet chambered), and he sought out a former gang member who’d been shot, but he never manages to integrate these people or the “irresponsible” gun owners he generally condemns (including the drunken shooters who ricochet bullets down on him and his wife during a rafting trip as they shoot bullets at a rock face) with his insistence that carrying a gun makes him a more responsible, careful individual, always aware of his surroundings. I accept that this is true for him (though not for the security guards who leave their guns in restrooms, or the firearms instructor Baum encounters who forgets that her gun is loaded, or for that matter my brother-in-law whose friend accidentally discharged his gun in my brother-in-law’s apartment).

But that very fact—that carrying a gun changes a person—is another way of saying that a person with a gun is a different socio/cultural/technical entity than a person without a gun, and not always for the better; because of this, regulating the gun can change how the person behaves and even how the person sees him or herself. He imagines how guns can fend off crimes—for example inducing carriers to deescalate and avoid confrontation because any confrontation could become deadly—but never how they could make crimes worse. Baum ultimately argues that we need warriors—sheepdogs, is his other term—in our culture. But why do they need so many guns? If the argument is that Americans, unlike, say, Japanese or Australians, need lots of civilian guns to make each other behave, then shouldn’t we be taking a harder look at what we might be doing differently so that this need would diminish?½

Excellent. I actually want to read this again. There were parts of the stories I know I missed the first time around!

Dan Baum has spent a lot of time trying to reconcile his two halves and, in a sense, two halves of America. There's liberal Jewish Democrat Baum and there's Baum who's had a love of guns and shooting since he was five years old. He thinks the rift in his soul is a rift in America, that, if he can explain why guns are important to so many of us, maybe he can get his friends, family, and political allies to understand and accept - as in not trying to ban and control - guns. And, maybe, those of us who like guns will become less suspicious of his politics. We'll all unite in attacking the future in a Progressive way.

Gun lovers and conservatives really aren't the target here for this book. Stereotypical liberals are.

This is not a book retreading criminological statistics (a brief chapter of footnotes covers that). Baum talks to people, except for members of the military or police, to whom guns are important.

I'm not a hardcore gun enthusiast, but I am a lifetime NRA member and have hung out at shooting ranges in three states. Many of the encounters Baum describes remind me of people I've meant then: hunters, competitive shooters, those interested in the technology of guns, preppers and survivalists, doctors - perhaps learning another way to "manage death" as one puts it, and guys who let complete strangers fire their new $9,000 gun. He also talks to four types of gun guys you would not readily think of: a weapons master for Hollywood productions, an engineer who became an evangelizer of gun ownership to his fellow blacks after he was robbed at gunpoint, a former Chicago gang member once jailed for shooting a man (and the only interview subject who has actually been shot), and a Jew who published academic works showing the direct inspiration of Nazi gun control laws on American gun control legislation and the role of gun control in fostering genocide in several countries -works pretty much ignored by every side of the gun debate. This is an honest, thorough, fun book.

These aren't dry interviews. Baum is funny and knows how to tell a story. Maybe, since he already related his own hunting stories, the "Hogzilla" chapter about hunting wild pigs in Texas wasn't strictly necessary, but it's the funniest of the book. He careens across the country starting out enthusiastically (and legally) packing a pistol in the Whole Foods Market in Boulder - and disappointingly noting no reaction - and ending up at NRA headquarters.

The matter of the NRA brings up one problem of the book. Baum constantly harps on people wanting to arm themselves out of fear of crime - even while crime rates are going down. He sees the NRA as exaggerating crime for political ends instead of concentrating on useful gun safety programs. The importance of maintaining a legal right and ability of armed self-defense no matter what the level of present personal danger is doesn't seem to occur to him.

Baum also spends a lot of time pointing out that Democrats and the Obama administration have given up on gun control. Indeed, he points out the Obama administration's only action on guns was to make it easier to carry concealed weapons in national parks. While he does acknowledge the futility and ignorance behind the Feinstein "assault weapons" ban, he says that's in the past. Obama and his political allies don't want to confiscate guns and restrict Second Amendment rights. That's just NRA fear mongering to get donations.

Of course, history has invalidated that viewpoint post-Sandy Hook. The NRA's fears turned out to be entirely justified. Gun-grabbing is in the DNA of many Democrats though, in fairness to Baum, I have met other Democrat and Obama supporters who like guns. I would dearly like to know how Baum would revise his book in light of recent history. His Democrat party has made gun control a priority again. His native state of Colorado has passed significant gun control legislation.

To his credit, Baum, at the end, begins to maybe see that many people in America are feeling "overmanaged and under-respected" in many areas, that their exasperated rhetoric often sounds like gun owners. Will he have a change of heart? I'm afraid that, like one of his interviewees, I think most political opinions are almost genetic, emotion based, rationalized with a patina of reason and very refractory. That goes for opinions on guns.

To be honest, while I'd like to hope Baum will change the minds of his fellow liberals, I don't think he will. I think gun guys will be the ones that most enjoy this book.

There is one theme running through this book which is interesting no matter which side of the debate you are on. Baum says that the experience of frequently carrying a weapon calmed him, made him more observant, and even more eager to avoid a confrontation. It seems that there might be something to be said for managing death, truly and practically considering the consequences of that power. One of his subjects thinks this is what links the place of the gun in American culture to the respect and mythic place the samurai has in Japan or the medieval knight in Europe.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, I was riveted to the television. I'd always been a storm lover. The drama and intensity of a thunderstorm held my attention in a way no TV show ever could. Of course I wanted to see this storm. A hurricane was totally out of the realm of my experience. To me, it was simply a massive thunderstorm. In August of 2005, I learned what devastation meant when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast.

Just as with most historic news events, certain memories are forever engraved in my brain. Images of people laying on roofs, surrounded by impossibly high water, are my immediate recollection. The Superdome, home to the New Orleans Saints, was filled with displaced residents, and the roof was peeled off with horrifying ease. Hearing that the levee had broken was honestly impossible to comprehend to someone who didn't live there. Even now, five years later, I see pictures and it isn't real to me. The devastation, the rot and death and heart-breaking permanence does not translate over the media.

This is where Dan Baum's book, Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans, comes in. Going back to Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Baum introduces us to New Orleans and the ability of her people to bounce back and thrive.

Look at these two hurricane 'after' pictures. The first one is from Betsy, the second one from Katrina. Even after this kind of mind-numbing devastation, New Orleans has continued to bounce back.



Baum introduces us to nine unique individuals who are tied, in most cases, by nothing more than their love of New Orleans as their home and heritage.

There is no way for me to do justice to these rich characters. Each is unique in their own way, full of desires, dreams, fears, and loves. Let me introduce each of them, but please excuse my brevity. Dan Baum will take you into their lives. I simply want to give you a taste of the wonderful backbone to his story.

There's Ronald Lewis, a man full of integrity and strength, who fights to hold on to New Orleans history. He reminds us that there is more to New Orleans than just the French Quarter. He takes you into the history of the Mardi Gras Indians and the Lower Ninth Ward. You can visit his museum called The House of Dance and Feathers.

Anthony Wells brings character and life, as well as respect and love, to the people who stayed with their houses longer than most thought was safe. He brings to light the grittier side of New Orleans culture, with humor and a light-hearted honesty.

Billy Grace comes to us from a different perspective. His hard-working background is intertwined with wealth and privilege. His ability to access some of the most exclusive groups of rich, white men in New Orleans, introduces us to the house of Rex and the social responsibility that goes along with it.

Frank Minyard has a love/hate relationship with his wealth, and works hard to avoid becoming one of the snobbish 'uptown swells' his mother so hated. Living a life of excess, he still manages to earn the respect of anyone reading, as he dedicates his life to helping those less fortunate than he had become.

Wilbert Rawlins and Belinda Carr work against their environment and history to reach success and happiness. With Wilbert's love of the band, and the children he teaches, we get a real glimpse into how very important music is to New Orleans and its residents. Belinda's ambition rivals that of most people you'll meet, and her ability to overcome adversity in her life is inspiring.

Timothy Bruneau gives us a rare glimpse into the New Orleans police department. Rather than the corrupt impression often given in the media, we see determination and love of the job in Tim. Even a horribly life-altering accident isn't enough to stop Tim's need to work for justice.

My favorite two characters I've saved for last.

Joyce Montana was married to one of the most remarkable men in New Orleans history. Allison "Tootie" Montana was a history-maker, full of life, and one of the most hard-working, creative minds that ever lived. Enjoy this glimpse into his life in Nine Lives, and check out some of the following sites to get an even greater in-depth view:

He's the Prettiest

Tootie's Last Suit

Allison "Tootie" Montana

And last, but not least by any stretch, is JoAnn Guidos. Formerly John Guidos, JoAnn worked to overcome adversity and self-doubt by being her true self. Her love and commitment to New Orleans and the misfits who live there led her to open Kajun's Pub. It was one of the few businesses that remained open during and after Hurricane Katrina. JoAnn let anyone and everyone in to find shelter, company, and a much-needed drink. Her contribution to New Orleans life makes me want to thank her, hug her, and support her in whatever way I can. The best way I can think of doing that is to ask you to visit her restaurant. Enjoy the bar, patronize the businesses down there, and get to know the people. Love them for who they are and know they will do the same for you. That's just part of New Orleans, and to me, JoAnn personifies that spirit of acceptance and joie de vivre.

Nine Lives will make you feel a full range of emotions, from start to finish. Dan Baum treats us to an inside look at the politics, culture, and racial tensions that make up New Orleans life and history. Most importantly, you will see that the people of New Orleans do not need our pity. They do not need part-time do-gooders, building a house and then leaving. They need our business. They need their culture and their people. They need music, food, and life. But never our pity.

Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans is a book well worth your time. It was well thought out, well written, and it interweaves the lives of nine unique individuals. The delicate web of lives touch each other in some ways and never intersect in others.

If I had to find any fault in this book it would be in the ending. I was disappointed not to have some loose ends tied up. But in the end, isn't that what life is?

4.5 out of 5 stars½

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, the people of New Orleans refuse to let their city die. This is a very good thing, as New Orleans is the only major American city where the philosophy of "laissez faire" refers not merely to economic liberalism, but to a way of life riveted to joys other than those that can be measured most readily in minutes and money.

Baum writes well and clearly, in a succinct and fairly journalistic style. The nine people he chooses to follow before and after Katrina are interesting, and in recounting their stories they reveal as much about the kaleidoscopic city they love as they do their tragedies and triumphs in it. Baum's storytelling technique can get a bit choppy as he intersperses the nine stories together over 40 years, switching from one to another. After the first few chapters I chose to read the book by character, rather than in order of pagination.

Baum's book Nine Lives is enlightening, entertaining, and moving. It's a stirring epistle to and from a great American city and its people. I recommend it.

Nine Lives is a moving biography of nine residents of New Orleans preceding, during and after Hurricane Katrina. Compiled from transcripts of days of interviews, these first person accounts detail the passion that the residents of New Orleans had for their city, the oppressive poverty and coexisting wealth , and the cultural indiosyncrasies that made New Orleans like no other place in the United States. At some points the first person accounts intersect enriching the impact of the storyline as two well-developed characters would share important moments. Though slower in some parts, this novel-like biography richly describes the uniqueness of New Orleans, weakened by the storm, but ultimately survived by those who couldn't leave it behind.

Wonderful characters and storytelling, sometime a bit choppy in switching between the nine people, great insight into the New Orleans way as "the best-organized city in the Carribean."

This is the best overview of New Orleans’s culture I’ve read. Following the lives of nine people makes it accessible without feeling forced. While I didn’t always like the subjects (in fact, two I downright hated), they were all extremely interesting. Starting with Hurricane Betsy is a key element that most New Orleans stories have been missing.

“What tripped me out, man, was every place we’d go, no matter how far, everybody knew me…I was connected, you feel me?” “Always been fucked-up here, man, but it’s home. Till you been someplace else, you don’t know.” – Anthony Wells

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 how they rose again, no matter how hopeless it may have seemed, to resurrect the only city they could ever call home.