Dan Baum (1956–2020)

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book. I read it simply because I wanted to read something about New Orleans, and frankly, my bar wasn’t set very high. It did look promising, but I wasn’t prepared for what a captivating narrative of New Orleans it turned out to be. The author’s approach—following multiple lives across a period of the city’s history (in this case, the four decades from Hurricane Betsy through Hurricane Katrina)—might easily have been gimmicky, and it show more certainly wasn’t. It might also have been pretty disjointed and ineffective, if the author didn’t have the skill and determination to be sure each of these lives was fully realized in the text. Fortunately, he did have those things. There are nine fleshed out lives on display here, but more than that, they work together to fill out an image of the city itself. The culture of New Orleans is portrayed with a depth I haven’t seen in many other depictions. The multiple threads converge as the city braces for, experiences, and then recovers from Katrina, and you can’t come away from it without a real sense of the devastation—cultural and social, as much as physical—wrought by the storm.

It’s quite an achievement. I had expected to enjoy it lightly and then move on. But honestly, I can’t tell you how tempted I am to go back to the beginning and read it again. show less

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 show more 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. show less