Summary and Reviews of Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death, and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum

Media Reviews

The New York Times - Dwight Garner …at about Page 65, something very real clicks in Nine Lives. The small, stray, unobtrusive details that Mr. Baum has been planting along the way begin coming together and paying off, like a slot machine that's begun to glow and vibrate. By the final third of Nine Lives, as the water begins pouring into the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, I was weeping like an idiot in the coffee shop where I was reading…Nine Lives may be this young year's most artful and emotionally resonating nonfiction book so far, and for that, to Mr. Baum, a belated New Year's toast.

The New York Times Book Review - Thomas Mallon Aware of journalism's failure to reimagine New Orleans as it had been before the hurricane, Baum has written a splendid book that is two-thirds prologue. The winds and waters of Katrina don't begin battering the nine lives he puts on display until the reader is past Page 200, by which time his characters and their city have been realized in all their generosity and folly.

The Washington Post - Jason Berry a spiritual saga strikingly different from [Baum's] magazine reporting. He says little about the political dynamics of Katrina and submerges his own voice as he weaves the experiences of nine New Orleans residents into a sinuous narrative. His technique brings to mind Robert Altman's film "Nashville," cutting between short scenes and longer vignettes from the lives of people who rarely intersect…I applaud Baum's shimmering portrait of the city. He adroitly moves his subjects through parades, prison, divorces, sex changes, fancy balls and gun brawls—yes, the stuff of life here—showing New Orleans as a magnetic, enduring force.

Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Baum's chronicle leaves readers with a bittersweet understanding of what Americans lost during Hurricane Katrina.