Magazine

“New Orleans is like no place else in America,” Dan Baum declares at the beginning of his book, Nine Lives, and then points to the un-American traits of the city’s inhabitants as proof: They seize the moment, care little for the cheap pleasures of money and are free from the constraints of ambition. Trite as it sounds, Baum eventually gives credence to his oversimplified thesis in this chronicle of the peculiar lives of nine New Orleanians during the years between 1965, when Hurricane Betsy struck, and 2007, when Hurricane Katrina’s effects were still rumbling throughout the city.