History/Non-fiction

NINE LIVES is an amazing and brilliant work of narrative non-fiction portraying nine New Orleaneans over a 40-year period, bookended by two epic hurricanes -- Betsy and Katrina.

Click here to listen to the exclusive podcast interview created for Octavia Books by Fred Kasten, and hear Dan Baum talk about Nine Lives.

"NINE LIVES: Death and Life in New Orleans is one of the most moving - and riveting - books ever written about the rich and complicated life we live here."
--Susan Larson, Book Editor for The Times-Picayune

"Hurricane Katrina is hardly the most interesting thing about New Orleans. The food, the music, and the architecture of New Orleans are fabulous, but it's the unusual nature of the city's people that make New Orleans unlike anyplace else in the United States. Obviously I couldn't write a book about all the people of New Orleans, so I chose these nine. Some I met during the crisis; others I met long after. All of them spent many hours telling me their life stories, with nothing to gain but the very New Orleans pleasure in storytelling."
-- Dan Baum

Native Americans used Okwata, meaning "wide water," as a shortcut for inland trade between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River. When the Europeans arrived, the original inhabitants showed them the route--the settlement near the river became the city of New Orleans, other lakeshore communities grew, and Lake Pontchartrain continued to be a vital waterway well into the 20th century. Aside from its economic value, Lake Pontchartrain was a cultural mecca: Mark Twain wrote about it and jazz sprang from its shores; locals and visitors traveled out to the amusement parks and opera pavilions, simple fishing villages and swanky yacht clubs, forts and lighthouses; and majestic hotels and camps perched precariously over the water. In Images of America: Lake Pontchartrain, photographs document memories of a time that not even Hurricane Katrina could erase.

Author Catherine Campanella has a deep respect and love for Lake Pontchartrain, having spent much time each year with family and friends at camps on the south shore. She is a teacher and former technology coordinator who has created several Web sites focusing on the cultural heritage of New Orleans.

Have you ever wondered where the fascinating, variously pronounced street names of New Orleans come from? This classic, humorous reference on street nomenclature by John Chase explains the history of such street names as Tchoupitoulas, Marigny, Poets, Decatur and many more.

Katrina was the signal event of the new century, a body blow to the national self-image. Scenes Americans expect to see in far-off, ungovernable countries have now unfolded in the mightiest nation on earth: victims struggling to survive amid depravity and death, an entire city reduced to an empty shell, a diaspora of refugees unseen since the days of the Dust Bowl.

Even as rebuilding gets underway, a sense of shock and confusion lingers. Indeed, sensationalism and political finger-pointing have made it nearly impossible to distinguish the truth from the spin. But now, John McQuaid and Mark Schleifstein cut through the confusion to offer a clear explanation for the greatest natural disaster in American history.

PATH OF DESTRUCTION isn�t just a book about the storm, those who survived, and those who didn�t; it�s also an account into the dreadful inadequacies that existed prior to 2005, an indictment of the Washingtonofficials who failed to act, and a scientific investigation into why these huge storms are coming now.

Brilliantly written and fiercely reported, PATH OF DESTRUCTION is necessary reading for all who wish to understand the past, present, and future of American natural disasters.

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) prowled the streets of New Orleans from 1877 to 1888 before moving on to a new life and global fame as a chronicler of Japan. In ten years of serving as a correspondent and selling his writing in such periodicals as the New Orleans Daily Item, Times-Democrat, Harper's Weekly, and Scribner's Magazine he crystallized the way Americans view New Orleans and its south Louisiana environs. Hearn was prolific, producing colorful and vivid sketches, vignettes, news articles, essays, translations of French and Spanish literature, book reviews, short stories, and woodblock prints. He haunted the French Quarter to cover such events as the death of Marie Laveau. His descriptions of the seamy side of New Orleans, tainted with voodoo, debauchery, and mystery made a lasting impression on the nation. Denizens of the Crescent City and devotees who flock there for escapades and pleasures will recognize these original tales of corruption, of decay and benign frivolity, and of endless partying. With his writing, Hearn virtually invented the national image of New Orleans as a kind of alternative reality to the United States as a whole.

From the moment he took office as governor in 1928 to the day an assassin's bullet cut him down in 1935, Huey Long wielded all but dictatorial control over the state of Louisiana. A man of shameless ambition and ruthless vindictiveness, Long orchestrated elections, hired and fired thousands at will, and deployed the state militia as his personal police force. And yet, paradoxically, as governor and later as senator, Long did more good for the state's poor and uneducated than any politician before or since. Outrageous demagogue or charismatic visionary? In this powerful new biography, Richard D. White, Jr., brings Huey Long to life in all his blazing, controversial glory.

White taps invaluable new source material to present a fresh, vivid portrait of both the man and the Depression era that catapulted him to fame. From his boyhood in dirt-poor Winn Parish, Long knew he was destined for power-the problem was how to get it fast enough to satisfy his insatiable appetite. With cunning and crudity unheard of in Louisiana politics, Long crushed his opponents in the 1928 gubernatorial race, then immediately set about tightening his iron grip. The press attacked him viciously, the oil companies howled for his blood after he pushed through a controversial oil processing tax, but Long had the adulation of the people.

In 1930, the Kingfish got himself elected senator, and then there was no stopping him.

White's account of Long's heyday unfolds with the mesmerizing intensity of a movie. Pegged by President Roosevelt as "one of the two most dangerous men in the country," Long organized a radical movement to redistribute money through his Share Our Wealth Society-and his gospel of pensions forall, a shorter workweek, and free college spread like wildfire. The Louisiana poor already worshiped him for building thousands of miles of roads and funding schools, hospitals, and universities; his outrageous antics on the Senate floor gained him a growing national base. By 1935, despite a barrage of corruption investigations, Huey Long announced that he was running for president.

In the end, Long was a tragic hero-a power addict who squandered his genius and came close to destroying the very foundation of democratic rule. Kingfish is a balanced, lucid, and absolutely spellbinding portrait of the life and times of the most incendiary figure in the history of American politics.