Books » Regional U.S. Biographies & Memoirs

Book Description
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.

Even working for The New Yorker, though, covering Katrina and its aftermath became frustrating. The longer I stayed in New Orleans, the more I understood that huge as Katrina was, it is hardly the most interesting thing about New Orleans. New Orleans is the most unusual place I've ever been-complicated, sensual, self-contradictory, hilarious, infuriating-and it was the place itself, not the tragedy that befell it, that I wanted to write about.

So when my wife and I thought about writing a book, it wasn't a "Katrina book" we had in mind. We finally settled on interweaving the life stories of nine New Orleanians-rich and poor and in between, black and white and in between, male and female and in between. Nine Lives begins in 1965, right after the last time a big part of the city flooded during a hurricane. By this we want to say: New Orleans was there a long time before Hurricane Katrina and it will be there a long time after. Katrina doesn't show up in Nine Lives until past page 200.

We had two guiding principles: No bad guys, and all happy endings. All nine of these people are, in their own way, heroes. And while we could have ended any of their stories on a down note, we instead end all at a moment of ascendance. There are many ways of looking at New Orleans, but this is how we chose to do so in Nine Lives.

We were careful not to make Nine Lives the kind of "issue" book one must read to understand current events. We want people to read it for the same reason they read The Kite Runner or The Bridges of Madison County-out of love of the characters and a warm, delicious eagerness to see their lives unfold. New Orleans is above all, a fun place, and we tried to make Nine Lives as much fun to read. -Dan Baum

Here is a genuine Little Big Man story, with all the color, sweep, and tragedy of a classic American western. It is the tale of Herman Lehmann, a captive of the Apaches on the Southern Plains of Texas and New Mexico during the 1870s. Adopted by a war chief, he was trained to be a warrior and waged merciless war on Apache enemies, both Indian and Euro-American. After killing an Apache medicine man in self-defense, he fled to a lonely hermitage on the Southern Plains until he joined the Comanches. Against his will, Lehmann was returned to his family in 1879. The final chapters relate his difficult readjustment to Anglo life.

Lehmann's unapologetic narrative is extraordinary for its warm embrace of Native Americans and stinging appraisal of Anglo society. Once started, the story of this remarkable man cannot be put down. Dale Giese's introduction provides a framework for interpreting the Lehmann narrative.

In February of his forty-fourth year, journalist David McCumber signed on as a hand on rancher Bill Galt's expansive Birch Creek spread in Montana. The Cowboy Way is an enthralling and intensely personal account of his year spent in open country---a book that expertly weaves together past and present into a vibrant and colorful tapestry of a vanishing way of life. At once a celebration of a breathtaking land both dangerous and nourishing, and a clear-eyed appreciation of the men---and women---who work it, David McCumber's remarkable story forever alters our long-held perceptions of the "Roy Rogers" cowboy with real-life experiences and hard economic truths.In February of his forty-fourth year, journalist David McCumber signed on as a hand on rancher Bill Galt's expansive Birch Creek spread in Montana.THE COWBOY WAY is an enthralling and intensely personal account of his year spent in open country---a book that expertly weaves together past and present into a vibrant and colorful tapestry of a vanishing way of life. At once a celebration of a breathtaking land both dangerous and nourishing, and a clear-eyed appreciation of the men---and women---who work it, David McCumber's remarkable story forever alters our long-held perceptions of the "Roy Rogers" cowboy with real-life experiences and hard economic truths.

" In the late 1940s, Janice and Henry Giles moved from Louisville, Kentucky, back to the Appalachian hill country where Henry had grown up a d where his family had lived since the time of the Revolution. With their savings, the couple bought a ramshackle house and forty acres of land on a ridge top and set out to be farmers like Henry's forebears. To this personal account of the trials of a city woman trying to learn the ways of the country and of her neightbors, Janice Holt Giles brings the same warmth, homor, and powers of observation that characterize her novels. Enlightening and evocative, personal and universally pertinent, this description of a year of ""backaches, fun, low ebbs, and high tides, and above all a year of eminent satisfaction"" will be welcomed by Janice Holt Giles's many readers, old and new."

"David Wyatt focuses our attention on the ripple effects of a stone tossed into a pond-a private pond, and a public pond, as well: as the circles widen and disappear, we remember and re-imagine the initial tossing of the stone, and re-examine our own lives in the context of the choices we've made, and the decisions that have been made for us, individually and as a nation."-Ann Beattie, author of The Doctor's House and Perfect Recall "Instinctively finding moments in which people are revealed for their true essence, Wyatt places the September 11 events on a human, domestic level, and shows how they touch everybody's lives."-Brian Bouldrey, author of The Boom Economy "This is truly astonishing storytelling, an unprecedented combination of autobiography and reflective essay, written with a startling clarity that evokes the vivid immediacy in our lives. There will be much journalism and historical commentary about September 11-but none can possibly match the emotional dimensions, the bewildered humanity, the day-to-day feel of things, how our inner lives are suddenly made turbulent, how we seek solace in the familiars of love and family. And the War Came is humbling, sad, and inspiring. I am tremendously grateful for this marvelous book."-Howard Norman, author of The Bird Artist and The Haunting of L On the day of the terrorist attacks, a man begins writing down things said by his family and friends. The trauma appears to have marooned diarist David Wyatt in a shell-shocked present tense. But as he experiences all of the emotions of that fall, he is visited by deep memories that transform his daily journal-keeping into an "accidental memoir," a narrative that reaches a surprising and moving conclusion on Thanksgiving Day.

Juggling the roles of English professor, restaurant owner, husband, father, son, and friend, Wyatt finds sustenance at the core of ordinary American life, resources at once so available and so elusive. Passionate about people, books, food, and landscapes present and lost-and absolutely unheroic-the voices summoned here counter the sanctimonious and the sentimental. Wyatt's elegantly understated memoir reveals how the events of September 11 affected ordinary people and presents this anthology of thoughts, feelings, and interactions in a frank and immediate voice.

Alaska! The Great Land and last frontier! "Bachelor's Roost" is the true account of homesteading in central Alaska told through letters to family and friends. 120 acres of wilderness, moose, bear, beaver and a man with an ax and a typewriter-the story of settling his land, building a cabin and life with only the Alaska Rail Road as transportation is funny, poignant and will be remembered by anyone with a dream.

A richly evocative, adventurous hybrid of memoir and visionary prose-poetry, it'ss a coming-of-age story as well as a meditation on mortality--and immortality--compellingly told in a singular voice. By turns poignant, humorous and hallucinatory, the book vividly recalls the author'ss experiences in the Georgia creek swamp that he extensively explored during his childhood and youth, following him into the larger world he entered as an adult and the more unpredictable landscape of his dreams and his elaborate imagination. Regional (Georgia) memoir by late gay author, posthumously published.

Ranching on the vast scale that Texas is famous for actually happened at King Ranch, a sea of grass that ultimately spread its pastures to countries around the globe under the fifty-year leadership of Bob Kleberg. This absorbing biography, written by Kleberg's top assistant of many years, captures both the life of the man and the spirit of the kingdom he ruled, offering a rare, insider's view of life on a fabled Texas ranch. John Cypher spent forty years (1948-1988) on King Ranch. In these pages, he melds highlights of Kleberg's life with memories of his own experiences as the "right hand" who implemented many of Kleberg's grand designs. In a lively story laced with fascinating anecdotes he both recounts his worldwide travels with Kleberg as the ranch expanded its holdings to Latin America, Cuba, Australia, the Philippines, Europe, and Africa, and describes timeless, traditional tasks such as roundup at the home ranch in Kingsville. Kleberg's accomplishments as the founder of the Santa Gertrudis cattle breed and a breeder of Thoroughbred racing horses receive full attention, as does his fabled lifestyle, which included friendships not merely with the rich and famous but also with Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who shared his love of horse racing. For everyone interested in ranching and one of its most famous practitioners, this book will be essential reading.

Pages: 396, Hardcover, 1st Books Library