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Spiegel and Grau
February 2009
On Sale: February 10, 2009
352 pages
ISBN: 038552319X
EAN: 9780385523196
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
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.
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