World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

published	2006 by Crown
binding	Hardcover
isbn	0307346609 (isbn13: 9780307346605)
ebook
pages	352
setting	Worldwide
description	The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences ...more [close] The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years. Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War. Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, "By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn't the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as 'the living dead'?" Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission. Eyewitness reports from the first truly global war: "I found 'Patient Zero' behind the locked door of an abandoned apartment across town....His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he'd rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds....He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls. At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They warned me not to touch him, that he was 'cursed.' I shrugged them off and reached for my mask and gloves. The boy's skin was...cold and gray...I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse." — Dr. Kwang Jingshu, Greater Chongqing, United Federation of China "'Shock and Awe'? Perfect name....But what if the enemy can't be shocked and awed? Not just won't, but biologically can't! That's what happened that day outside New York City, that's the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn't shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They're not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!" — Todd Wainio, former U.S. Army infantryman and veteran of the Battle of Yonkers "Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it?...For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth." — General Travis D'Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe [close]
date added	12-10-06 edit book

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Jason rated it:

03/24/08

Read in March, 2008

(My full review of this book is longer than Goodreads' word-count limitations; find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

Anytime I hear of some funny, gimmicky book suddenly becoming popular among the hipster set, I always squint my eyes and brace myself for the worst; because usually when it comes to such books, the worst is all you can expect to find, an endless series of fluffy pop-culture pieces designed specifically for crafty point-of...more

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Brett rated it:

04/12/08

bookshelves: horror

I have fretted long and hard about what my choice for book club would be, when that time finally came. I wanted both to pick a piece of literature that would be surprising and that most others in the club would not have considered reading, but I also wanted it to be good. After all, I have spent the last few months reading the likes of The Kite Runner and Water for Elephants. If I can put up with that kind of sissy-pants literature (I am of course, joking. Partially.) then I wanted to make other...more I have fretted long and hard about what my choice for book club would be, when that time finally came. I wanted both to pick a piece of literature that would be surprising and that most others in the club would not have considered reading, but I also wanted it to be good. After all, I have spent the last few months reading the likes of The Kite Runner and Water for Elephants. If I can put up with that kind of sissy-pants literature (I am of course, joking. Partially.) then I wanted to make others endure something they would not normally consider. So I cast around for a while, and eventually landed on this little book. The deal was sealed when, in a strange coincidence, the day I started to read this book, the author turned out to be reading in town. So I went to hear him, and decided this book was fate. He signed my copy and added "survive book club".

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a hell of a fun book. Though not without moments of humor, it takes itself completely seriously. It is laid out as other "oral histories" are, with short, "man on the street" style interviews, as well as interviews with those that experienced certain unique aspects of the war. Humans have, at least for now, vanquished the zombie threat, though there are still zombies out there and no one knows if the plague might start again. Through the eyes of the participants we see the earliest outbreaks, the chaos of the Great Panic, fighting the hordes to a stalemate, the tide slowly turn, and finally the re-emergence of humanity. WWZ is full of intimate detail, some touching or inspiring; some brutal, remorseful, or bittersweet. There is a fair share of blood and guts--this is a horror novel, after all--but many of the snapshots are unexpectedly poignant.

Really though, the zombies in the story are only a stand in, a way to pique the interest of readers. It could be any kind of worldwide emergency, particularly disease, such as Avian Flu. The bulk of the story is showing lack of government planning and bureaucratic missteps. And it's impossible not to read and think of the inadquate disaster response to Katrina in the U.S., and other large scale catastrophes around the world. Also on this wavelength, there are some fairly clear allusions to modern political figures and to the war in Iraq. However, the novel is truly global in scope, and we spend time in a variety of countries besides the U.S. I was especially intrigued at the way the zombie war boosted the prestige of eastern nations, and helped to tip the balance of geopolitical power toward China and India, much like a major worldwide disaster might really do.

Criticisms I expect to have to deal with at book club: there are 40 or 50 different "voices" or characters in this book, most of them only getting a few pages to speak. As such, some voices will obviously be stronger than others. Also, we do not build up large amounts of attachment to a single character over the course of the book. I think Brooks did a great deal of research on what type of weapons the military might use to combat a zombie plague, and he spends quite a few pages detailing various sorts of tactics and specific weapons that could be used. To some degree, I lost interest in this topic. I felt that since he did the research, he felt like he had to use some of it, but honestly, I wasn't too in to learning about exactly how weapons systems work. Less would have been more. As someone who works in politics, as does most of my book club, some of the interviews with political figures were a little heavy handed.

One particular section I wanted to praise was the writing about zombies in the water. This was a very effective image for me and will have me thinking twice next time I'm swimming in a body of water after dark. And, of course, as with any story about zombies, during certain moments you have to ask yourself who the real monsters are. The zombies, grotesque as they are, have no choice in their actions. It is the humans that stab each other in the back and become their own worst enemies, willing to do anything to fellow survivors in order to gain their own advantage. Even in the last pages, as some survivors talk about the way the crisis brought people together, I had to wonder if they were already starting to gloss over the worst moments with familiar cliches. Do these sorts of crisis bring people together, or is that only the story we tell ourselves when it's all over, when we've done what we must to survive?

WWZ is a fast and interesting read. Obviously I think highly enough of it that I chose it to make my coworkers read. If you happen to be an interp coach reading this, you might seriously think about getting a copy; I think some very cool pieces could be cut from it, and I guarantee you'll be the only school in your area doing them.

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Mark rated it:

07/20/08

bookshelves: one-book-per-week---08-09

Read in July, 2008

I haven't seen every zombie movie or read every zombie book in existence, but I have watched enough to know the cliches of the genre. It was so refreshing to read a book that avoided so many of these conventions and covered some new ground. I mean, how many zombie stories span the entire world? How many cover the entire apocalypse, from Patient Zero to the aftermath/rebuilding? Aren't we all a little tired of zombie stories that closely follow a small group of survivors, as they get picked o...more I haven't seen every zombie movie or read every zombie book in existence, but I have watched enough to know the cliches of the genre. It was so refreshing to read a book that avoided so many of these conventions and covered some new ground. I mean, how many zombie stories span the entire world? How many cover the entire apocalypse, from Patient Zero to the aftermath/rebuilding? Aren't we all a little tired of zombie stories that closely follow a small group of survivors, as they get picked off one by one?

Each chapter is only a few pages long, and consists of an interview of one individual survivor. These survivors range from the powerful elites who made decisions affecting millions, to the most inconsequential peons swept up in the winds of war, to the soldiers on the front line. Each interview is unique in a number of ways; the individual's personality and experiences, their nationality, their role in the events. The nationality of each character in particular is what makes this book so interesting. Whereas most zombie movies I've seen take place in the US (and often end with the heroes fleeing to Canada for some reason), virtually every corner of the world is represented in World War Z. Every nation deals with the crisis in it's own way; the Canadians flee to the arctic, the Americans try to fight the zombies as they would a conventional war, the French use the opportunity to rebuild their national pride, the South Africans rely on a war measures plan developed during Apartheid, the Russians keep control of their military through decimation. Part way through the book, I realized that what I was reading was sociology disguised as science-fiction/horror. Some might argue that the sociology is somewhat sophomoric and predictable, and they would have a point. But remember, this is not written as a history, it's written as an oral history. Each interview is just one man or one woman, and that's what the book is really about. The big picture stuff is interesting and compelling, but this is about individuals surviving, each in their own way. As the author asks in the introduction: “isn't the human factor what connects us so deeply to our past”?

Which brings to mind another interesting aspect of World War Z. In the first pages of the book the journalist conducting the interviews explains the rationale for compiling an oral history, and states his intention to avoid any interpretations or intrusions into people's stories. We hear his questions in many of the interviews, and occasionally an interviewee with react to his body language but otherwise he is virtually silent. It made me wonder about his story. We know that he is American, and that he was commissioned to write a report for the UN. Given what we learn throughout the book, we can probably assume that he spent the war in the “safe zone” in California, but there is no direct evidence. This is not a criticism of the book; on the contrary it's a compliment to the fact that the author does such a good job removing the journalist from the interviews. It left me wanting more.

As a clinical psychologist, it was enjoyable to see the author imagined the psychological trauma that would result from something unimaginable. Of course, there was reference to standard, expected illnesses like PTSD and depression. But we also encounter some creative and reasonably plausible conditions such as the quislings, feral children, and Asymptomatic Demise Syndrome. The human psyche is capable of incredible things in response to trauma and stress, and it says a lot about this book that the author made a point to reach beyond the kinds of reactions that people have in the real world and try to picture what would happen in this reality that he created. At the same time, given the fact that we are reading the stories of survivors, we are almost by definition hearing the tales of the most resilient ones. As you read World War Z, you can't help but wonder what you would do in this situation. How would you react waking up in a world that makes no sense? I think most people would like to imagine that they would be strong, moral, and resilient, and would always be ready and willing to do the right thing. But most people also believe that they wouldn't violate their morality in response to demands of an authority, and research has shown otherwise. If WWII led to the Milgram obedience studies, what kind of psychological research would emerge in the aftermath of World War Z?...less

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sarah rated it:

03/05/07

bookshelves: fiction, futuristic-dystopia, horror, humor-satire

Read in January, 2007

In 2005, the world watched in horror, and George W. Bush twiddled his thumbs, as Hurricane Katrina bore down on a defenseless Louisiana. The Bush administration's obsession with "homeland security" did not extend to taking the obvious measures necessary to save the people of New Orleans from disaster. And as climate change and the threat of pandemic disease grow each year, a recent study showed that very few US cities are prepared to care for their citizens in the case of a major dis...more In 2005, the world watched in horror, and George W. Bush twiddled his thumbs, as Hurricane Katrina bore down on a defenseless Louisiana. The Bush administration's obsession with "homeland security" did not extend to taking the obvious measures necessary to save the people of New Orleans from disaster. And as climate change and the threat of pandemic disease grow each year, a recent study showed that very few US cities are prepared to care for their citizens in the case of a major disaster.

What does this have to do with zombies? Everything, according to "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War". Written in the interview style of Studs Terkel's classic "Working," "WWZ" is a fictional account of what happens when politicians put profit and ideology before human need. In WWZ's future, a mysterious virus appears in rural China around 2008, just as the Bush administration is winding down and the American people have finally insisted on an end to the war in Iraq. The virus, initially known as "African rabies," kills its victims within a few days and then reanimates their dead bodies, which then become zombies intent on eating human flesh. Anyone bitten by a zombie is doomed to become a zombie. (Brooks' zombies follow the rules horror fans will know from George Romero's classic "Living Dead" movies.) Initially, studies are issued showing that isolated outbreaks of the virus have the potential to become a global pandemic, but the reports are shelved in an election year, and those who protest the government's neglect of the issue are labeled 'NPR liberals' and ignored.

By the time world governments begin to acknowledge the zombie threat and take action, it is too late, and the zombie uprising is unstoppable. It results in a global human-zombie war that lasts ten years, devastates the earth, rearranges the world map and (perhaps) renders capitalism forever irrelevant. Brooks' narrator travels the globe ten years after the end of the war, interviewing survivors, soldiers, profiteers, politicians and others about their role in "World War Z". The interviews illustrate twenty years of world history from the point of view of ordinary people.

Brooks' vision of the future is cynical and bitter. Drug companies do their best to profit from the crisis by marketing useless drugs as miracle cures, causing the deaths of thousands. A nuclear crisis erupts in South Asia as Indian refugees stream through Pakistan and into Iran, causing a nuclear exchange between Iran and Pakistan. Israel, out of desperation, grants Palestinians the right of return and uses its apartheid wall to quarantine itself from the world; it remains safe from the zombie menace but is rocked by a civil war when right-wing Zionists revolt. The US military abandons its citizens on the East Coast, moves the federal government to Hawaii, and uses the Rocky Mountains as its line of defense. And Cuba, relatively safe as an island, finds itself overrun with millions of refugees from the US, houses them in refugee camps, and develops "guest worker" programs to allow Americans to "do the jobs Cubans don't want to do."

"World War Z" is an impressive achievement of speculative fiction: it is both a trenchant left-wing political critique and a well-written page-turner that will satisfy the most demanding horror and sci-fi fans. ...less

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Silvercharmer rated it:

08/03/07

bookshelves: scifi-fantasy, zombies

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: Everyone. You don't have to like zombies, you just have to be able to stand them.

this book. is brutally fantastic. i'm not sure if i've ever used that particular combination of descriptors before, but it fits. this is the same guy who wrote the "zombie survival guide," though i will have to rely on the husband to tell me how much of that manual informs this book, as he has been reading that one. both books were his christmas presents, btw, and i had no real mission to read either, but i started idly flipping through world war z out of boredom, and the next thing yo...more this book. is brutally fantastic. i'm not sure if i've ever used that particular combination of descriptors before, but it fits. this is the same guy who wrote the "zombie survival guide," though i will have to rely on the husband to tell me how much of that manual informs this book, as he has been reading that one. both books were his christmas presents, btw, and i had no real mission to read either, but i started idly flipping through world war z out of boredom, and the next thing you know i had finished it. zombies have only recently been part of my life, and unfortunately, if there is a class of experts regarding this particular "virus," i belong in it. this comes from being married to someone who scouts out every place we go, be it wal-mart, the mall, a restaurant, for possible weapons, fortification sites, and plausible escape routes in the event of a zombie invasion. these things invade my dreams, frighten the living hell out of me, but still, this book rocked my socks.

what makes this book interesting is that it takes the form of an honest to god historical account, complete with footnotes. the author chronicles individual accounts of a zombie infestation that sweeps the entire world and puts the human race on the brink of extinction. it takes itself absolutely seriously from cover to cover, which is part of what makes it so successful. it's written for an audience who presumably knows the basic history of the war, which of course, we do not. it does not explain the timeline, it does not define certain events, just refers to them as though you will recognize what the speaker is referring to. you are expected to catch on, read between the lines, fill in the blanks on your own, which fuels your imagination while simultaneously leaving you begging for more. it's just the right amount of information, i think, because even though i would have liked to see a basic chronology of events, have some background information available, i think the writer was right to give me less than what i think i need, because having that information might actually detract in the end.

unlike the traditional zombie movies (the exception that comes to mind being the latest romero flick, land of the dead), this looks beyond the immediate desperation for simple survival, and explores the effects on economy, military, government, commerce, trade, etc. things you might not normally consider (if you spend time considering the fallout of a zombie infestation), such as what refugee patterns would emerge and how that would jeopardize different nations, the fortune that would suddenly be made in human trafficking, the impact on our oceans and atmosphere, which nations are tumbled to the ground and which ones rise from the ashes to gain prosperity and power, the desperate yet woefully ineffectual efforts made by civilians to survive (when they do not have survival skills), the spread of the virus through infected organ transplants, the zombie threat underwater, the fortunes made by pharmeceutical companies off of fake cures, and a LOT more. aside from these unique and fascinating perspectives, brooks writes a painfully honest account of the human factor. the danger facing humanity was not just from zombies: it was humanity itself. the psychological damage incurred by soldiers, witnesses, survivors...he paints a clear picture of how merely avoiding a zombie bite was not enough to keep you alive.

it's brilliantly imaginative, utterly fascinating on all levels, and so worth the read even if you have no interest in the living dead. though, if you are sensitive to nightmares, be on your guard. i've been dreaming about this stuff like crazy. the past couple of nights....less

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Pamela rated it:

12/23/07

bookshelves: empire

Read in November, 2007

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the livi...more The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.
Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, "By excluding the human factor, aren't we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn't the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as 'the living dead'?"

Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.

Eyewitness reports from the first truly global war:

"I found 'Patient Zero' behind the locked door of an abandoned apartment across town....His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he'd rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds....He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls. At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They warned me not to touch him, that he was 'cursed.' I shrugged them off and reached for my mask and gloves. The boy's skin was...cold and gray...I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse." — Dr. Kwang Jingshu, Greater Chongqing, United Federation of China

"'Shock and Awe'? Perfect name....But what if the enemy can't be shocked and awed? Not just won't, but biologically can't! That's what happened that day outside New York City, that's the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn't shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They're not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!" — Todd Wainio, former U.S. Army infantryman and veteran of the Battle of Yonkers

"Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it?...For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth." — General Travis D'Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe...less

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Stuart rated it:

07/15/08

God bless George A. Romero – zombies in horror would be pretty much dead and buried (permanently) without him, popping up only occasionally, creepily, in stories of voodoo or witchcraft. Instead, following his inspired reimagining of the entire genre zombie horror is a pretty vibrant and terrifying corner of the genre: Kirkman’s The Walking Dead series at Image Comics is doing well, and there are various other excellent zombie comics out there, not least Marvel Zombies. Shaun Of The Dead a...more God bless George A. Romero – zombies in horror would be pretty much dead and buried (permanently) without him, popping up only occasionally, creepily, in stories of voodoo or witchcraft. Instead, following his inspired reimagining of the entire genre zombie horror is a pretty vibrant and terrifying corner of the genre: Kirkman’s The Walking Dead series at Image Comics is doing well, and there are various other excellent zombie comics out there, not least Marvel Zombies. Shaun Of The Dead and the remake of Dawn Of The Dead were big hits (Night Of The Living Dorks slightly less so, but it’s still worth a look), and this latest book by Max Brooks, not coincidentally the author of The Zombie Survival Guide, is an entirely worthy addition to the burgeoning zombie canon.

Subtitled ‘An Oral History Of The Zombie War’ World War Z does exactly what it says on the tin – collecting oral testimony from those who managed to survive the global outbreak of zombies, the devastating plague that came perilously close to wiping out all mankind. Brooks’ unobtrusive questioning of people from all walks of life, all over the world, gives us an overview of the entire outbreak from its unexplained beginnings in China, through the growing panic, the origin of the ruthless – but vital – Redeker Plan, that disastrous US Army counter-attack at Yonkers, then the seemingly unstoppable hordes of undead overrunning the entire planet…and afterwards.

Like Romero, Brooks treats his subject absolutely seriously, even as many of his characters are initially unable to, and the book’s central conceit: that this is not a novel but a book of collected testimony, ‘lest we forget’, works much better than one might have expected. Each section is seldom more than 4-5 pages long, so we never get bogged down in unnecessary detail – quite the opposite, this is a fast moving machine gun of a book, each chapter a burst of nightmarish detail. Brooks cleverly uses the format to weave street-level encounters with the undead in amongst a global perspective so that we get the best of both worlds – a dispassionate outline of the collapse of civilisation, and the terror of face-to-face encounters with decaying hordes of the undead.

There’s a real creeping sense of panic and horror throughout: anyone who picks up a book about a zombie war surely already know exactly what’s coming, but Brooks’ writing - well-researched, entirely believable and perfectly pitched – hits the right note every single time. He seems to have thought through each angle with a surprising degree of rigour: from the behaviour and potential of his zombies, to the responses of different countries – I frequently found myself thinking, ‘Blimey, yeah, of course that would happen!’ - and shivering.

As with Romero, there’s some fairly harsh political commentary underlying some of the stories, but it’s not blatantly partisan or too obtrusive; and even if you disagree with Brooks’s characters apportioning of blame then there are enough inspiring and heroic moments to balance out what we see of humanity’s spiteful underbelly. In fact, I came close to punching the air a couple of times towards the end of World War Z, and biting my lip whilst reading some of the tales of quiet heroism.

I didn’t discover until after I’d finished reading World War Z that Max Brooks is actually the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft - not that it makes any difference, because this gripping, intelligent and very human book stands completely on its own merits. If you’re a zombie fan then, believe me, you need this book. Even if you think the only brains in a Romero movie are those visible onscreen then you’ll still appreciate and be moved by this fantastic book....less

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Sandi rated it:

(review of isbn 0307346612)

08/27/08

bookshelves: 2008, cross-genre

Read in July, 2008

8/27/08 Update--I'm downgrading my rating of this book. I still like it, but I realize it's not very original. I caught the beginning of "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" on the SciFi channel a few days ago and it was deja-vu. The zombies are reanimated by a virus and you can only kill them by shooting them in the head. Since the movies (and video game) came first, I'm afraid my original rating was a result of ignorance.

__________________________________________________________
I av...more 8/27/08 Update--I'm downgrading my rating of this book. I still like it, but I realize it's not very original. I caught the beginning of "Resident Evil: Apocalypse" on the SciFi channel a few days ago and it was deja-vu. The zombies are reanimated by a virus and you can only kill them by shooting them in the head. Since the movies (and video game) came first, I'm afraid my original rating was a result of ignorance.

__________________________________________________________
I avoid best-sellers and horror novels. I have found that there’s a lot of crap out there that ends up on the best-seller lists and I’m not a fan of horror novels. But, “World War Z” has generated a lot of buzz among people whose opinions I respect, so I decided to set aside my prejudices and give the book a try.

To set the record straight, in my opinion, this book is more apocalyptic science fiction than horror. Yes, it is about zombies going around attacking humans. However, the origin of the zombies is explained in a very scientific manner. A peasant in rural China cuts his foot while wading in a river and soon sickens. He dies, but his body is re-animated. He bites a couple of people and they go through the same disease process. It isn’t long before this virus is spreading faster than you can say “bird flu”. This disease is so virulent and so un-deadly, it makes Ebola look like a common cold.

The way the story is told is pretty unusual in fiction. It’s told through a series of interviews (oral histories) with Zombie War survivors taken shortly after the end of the war. The chapters are broken down into the stages of the Zombie War. Each interview is preceded by an introductory paragraph that tells who the interviewer is meeting and where they are. The subjects range from political and military leaders to soldiers and civilians. They come from all walks of life and from all around the world. He even interviews a feral child who ran away from zombies attacking her family and neighbors and was surviving on her own after the age of four.

As compelling as the concept is and as unusual as the narrative method is, “World War Z” suffers from some serious flaws. First, the oral history style decreases the dramatic tension of the story. Each history is short, anywhere from a few paragraphs to a few pages. The reader doesn’t get enough of each character’s story to really engage with him or her. Furthermore, because each story is told in retrospect, the reader doesn’t get a sense of immediacy. The characters also don’t have sufficiently different voices to make their stories convincing. Oral histories of real people work because they are real people and each has his or her unique voice. In “World War Z,” each character is the product of the author’s imagination. Brooks has an incredible imagination, but he only has one mind and that becomes obvious after the first few interviews. I think this book is one that would really work best in an audio book format with a different actor taking each part and giving it uniqueness.

Despite its flaws, I really liked “World War Z.” I like the way this fictional work reads like non-fiction. I like how the story is told through multiple first-person accounts. It’s unusual and intriguing. The author made some daring choices and it clearly paid off.
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John rated it:

08/02/07

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: Sci fi readers, horror readers, fans of oral history

There are reasons to be wary of this book. The title is a little silly, and Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide was tongue in cheek. Hell, he's the son of legendary comedy director Mel Brooks. And zombies are creatures that gained popularity thanks to film, which is contrary to the nature of most good creatures. Vampires, ghosts, wizards, witches, dragons, orcs, goblins, angels, werewolves and even Frankenstein's undead abomination came from literature first, and entered film later. Film se...more There are reasons to be wary of this book. The title is a little silly, and Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide was tongue in cheek. Hell, he's the son of legendary comedy director Mel Brooks. And zombies are creatures that gained popularity thanks to film, which is contrary to the nature of most good creatures. Vampires, ghosts, wizards, witches, dragons, orcs, goblins, angels, werewolves and even Frankenstein's undead abomination came from literature first, and entered film later. Film seldom contributes originality to prose. Fortunately Max Brooks pulled off a minor miracle in adapting the largely theatrical terror into the written word, by use of the literary apocalypse convention and oral stories. Our familiarity with the outlines of a zombie outbreak (or any plague outbreak) from so many films helps fill in the gaps between his various storytellers' accounts.

Brooks has a remarkable sense of voice, and places the various interviewees well, such that they sound all the more distinct in contrast to the preceeding and following speaker. We get a lot of interesting subjects, from the country doctor in China who treated the first "bite," to a hitman hired to protect a millionaire mogul, to a blind man who somehow managed to survive in the most infested parts of Japan - Hiroshima. Thus we also get a total sense of the rise and fall of the outbreak, with each arc illustrated by brilliant personal narratives of "true" stories from those periods that give us a sense of not just the plot, but how culture changed in this fictional earth. The narrative is unified by the interviewer who visits them and directs parts of their story, but only enough so that we can both enjoy the overarching plot and the survivors' stories.

Like the best science fiction the outlandish premise allows us to get a fresh view of real human issues. Brooks approaches such issues on multiple levels, from simple human interests like base selfishness and how we act in desperation, to political crises, such as early on in the book when the Israelis and Palestinians blame each other for the plague, and even claim it is a hoax perpetrated by their enemies. Many of the characters are inspired by people from real life, like Howard Dean, Karl Rove and Nelson Mandela - but rather than coming off as cheesy, they lend an air of authenticity to the tale. There is just enough real tension, both base and topical, to lend it the right aura for a great exercise in modern fantasy/sci fi - it's easily one of the best fantasy/sci fi books set in the modern world I've read in quite some time.

The quality of Brooks' book was totally unexpected. This was supposed to be a spin-off from an impulse-buy. But by the time you finish World War Z I think you'll hope along with me that this, his first work of fiction, won't be his last....less

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Sherri rated it:

08/27/08

bookshelves: science_fiction

Read in August, 2008

Not, perhaps, the best book to read before going to sleep.

WARNING -- this review contains information that might be considered spoilers, but are so minor as not to really merit a block for potential "spoilers".

1/3 in. Mostly this book seems to be about anger with the government. The Zombies are mere metaphor, the individuals stories all have the same voice (with a little window dressing here and there). This reads more like an anti-government diatribe. It's anti-ALL g...more Not, perhaps, the best book to read before going to sleep.

WARNING -- this review contains information that might be considered spoilers, but are so minor as not to really merit a block for potential "spoilers".

1/3 in. Mostly this book seems to be about anger with the government. The Zombies are mere metaphor, the individuals stories all have the same voice (with a little window dressing here and there). This reads more like an anti-government diatribe. It's anti-ALL government (not that government is bad inherently, but that all current governments are stupid, self centered, blind, greedy, blind to reality...and so forth, to the detriment of the people they purportedly are to serve and protect. That heavy duty anger makes reading the book like slogging through mud.

3/4 in. The book has broken down into some pretty obvious parts. Each "interview" is basically another "what if" + zombies. It touches on each potential horror or hope -- cannibalism, memories of a child, escapes of assorted kinds. Many of the people interviewed are crazy/mentally ill, one way or another. Unfortunately, while the stories draw upon the requisite horrifying imagery and ideas, the writing -- and the stories -- fall rather flat. The ideas are good, but the execution...not so much. Still, I will press on to finish it.

Finished. If I could give 2 1/2 stars, I would. I suppose I expected something else from this book. The Zombie Survival Guide had, for better or worse, a thread of humor going through it, possibly unintentional, possibly just very, very dry. That was missing from WWZ.

Perhaps the problem is that stories of human stupidity, fear, arrogance and horror are old stories, even cliches. It takes a good writer to take a story like that and make something worth reading out of it. Brooks doesn't have that strength. He uses a lot of familiar tropes to create emotional reactions -- one or two images pushed my buttons and got my emotions going -- but the attempt were obvious.

This is also unusual fiction in that it is a series of made up interviews (the oral history part), but the voices are all 'types'. We are, of course, told about the people we hear. We never see them do much. They tell stories about themselves and others, but that doesn't make them good storytellers. Without the usual techniques of narrative fiction at hand, Brooks is fighting up hill to make this engaging.

The ideas are good. It's researched well enough that with my layman's knowledge I felt no need to check anything. It reminds me of nothing so much as early or "Golden Age" science fiction -- interesting ideas played out over a stock work with stock characters responding. Not much plot, in this case, to hold things together (you know how everything ends when you start reading the book). This is an explanation of how things happened.

Your experience with the book may vary depending on your own expectations and history. I'm fairly lukewarm about it. I found no surprises and nothing to really pull me into it. Things played out as I expected. It isn't a bad book so much as a mediocre one. In the end, I wasn't so much afraid or worried about the monsters of the living dead as I am reminded once again about the monsters of the living....less

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Noah rated it:

11/21/07

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: zombie fans, post-apocalypse lovers

When I first heard about the book World War Z my first thought was simply “cool”. This also seemed to be the sentiment amongst most people who saw the book or read about. While reading this book, often at work on my breaks, people would stop and ask questions like, “is that book funny?” or, “that looks neat, how is it?” And, each time questions like these were asked, I would put down the book and begin to tell them about many of the interesting ideas in the book, the fact that the...more When I first heard about the book World War Z my first thought was simply “cool”. This also seemed to be the sentiment amongst most people who saw the book or read about. While reading this book, often at work on my breaks, people would stop and ask questions like, “is that book funny?” or, “that looks neat, how is it?” And, each time questions like these were asked, I would put down the book and begin to tell them about many of the interesting ideas in the book, the fact that the zombie war could act as a proxy for the Iraq war or the hurricane Katrina disaster, or that it is written in a format using fake interviews. People seemed to respond very positively to these comments, yet, I have met only one other person who has ever read this book. It seems to me that your average reader who might be interested in the book, would never be caught dead reading it. No matter how positive or serious reviews for this book are only a select number of geeks like me will ever read this book. Does this affect the quality of the book? Not at all. However, a book that no one will read, does not a good book make. This made the going a bit slow. Also, when I first heard about this book, after thinking how cool it sounded, my first worry was that it would not be terribly original. Honestly, when I say zombie novel, how many people automatically start to wonder if the novel is really any good? Suffice it to say, despite all these first impressions going against it, Brooks’ World War Z is a highly engaging, and exceptionally original work.

While this book could be considered a sort of sequel to his first book The Zombie Survival Guide Brooks eschews the cold hard facts and chooses instead to focus on the lives of the people caught up in this unlikely, yet horrible scenario. We are given a wide range of highly developed and diverse people to get to know. Interviews range from meetings with war profiteers, to generals, to pregnant mothers, to blind gardeners, etc. This variety and detail renders each short interview highly engaging, and one is left with a feeling that these people could easily be your friends, family, or neighbors. However, it is the short interview format that also hurts the flow of the book. Once the reader starts an interview he will be hooked, but there is no sense of continuity, other than linear time and zombies, that links these stories together. We are not given characters to follow through the arc of the story and get heavily invested in. The only consistent character is Brooks himself, however, at the beginning, he states that he wishes to remain as invisible in these stories as possible. So, we are left somewhat high and dry. In the end, this really only results in making the book a bit more slow going, but does divide things up into small, highly digestible pieces.

I do not wish to go into too much detail about the world Brooks has constructed. Part of the fun is finding these small, highly detailed and imaginative nuggets along the way. Please, give this book a chance and do not let the concept or title put you off. This is a serious work of fiction. If I can read a book called Bimbos of the Death Sun you can read a book about a zombie war....less

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Alex rated it:

03/06/08

bookshelves: books-read-in-2006

Read in October, 2006

WORLD WAR Z BY MAX BROOKS: I’ve read two books about zombies this year: one I found fascinating, incredibly interesting, and decreed it the best book of the year!; the other was formulaic, predictable, kind of failed in its goal, and ended terrible – one of them was written by Stephen King, can you guess which one? Being an avid King reader (yes, I’ve read it all!), you would expect the King zombie book to be the former, but alas. Cell was abysmal, World War Z is the best book I’ve re...more WORLD WAR Z BY MAX BROOKS: I’ve read two books about zombies this year: one I found fascinating, incredibly interesting, and decreed it the best book of the year!; the other was formulaic, predictable, kind of failed in its goal, and ended terrible – one of them was written by Stephen King, can you guess which one? Being an avid King reader (yes, I’ve read it all!), you would expect the King zombie book to be the former, but alas. Cell was abysmal, World War Z is the best book I’ve read in a long time.

The key to World War Z is in its execution not as a horror book – even though it’s about humanity’s struggling war against zombies, and even though it’s most likely categorized as horror in every bookstore – but as a piece of thrilling and thought-provoking and contemplative fiction. Brooks’ genius with this book is in using a quasi-journal format where the narrator is traveling around the world interviewing a variety of different people from different backgrounds and cultures on how they managed to survive the war with the zombies. The book is set about a decade after World War Z, giving the reader the reassurance that we survived, and this book is about how.

Brooks’ first book, The Zombie Survival Guide, gave step by step preparedness for what to do when confronted by one or a host of zombies: it’s a humor book meant to make you laugh and snicker at this outlandish situation. World War Z is not a funny book, but a deadly serious one. It’s quite shocking to contemplate the extensive research Brooks must have done to find out crucial details not just about the thirty different countries the narrator visits, but to also find out specific slang and expressions to that country and culture, and to know how a member of the military would act as opposed to a ordinary person, or another specifically skilled member of society in that country. He must have gained a wealth of knowledge about the different societies of the world in general.

Brooks then takes it one step further in coming out with different operations and game plans for the different countries: what the government did, what the military did, and what its citizens did, all pertaining to the current regime of the time. The book is set not more than twenty years from the present time, so we are all familiar with the regimes and different governments of this world: from Bush’s conservative, military heavy America; to a clandestine and mysterious North Korea; to a potent and still racist South Africa.

World War Z is a book about zombies that changes the way you think about the world and its people. It makes you think about how we’re all in this together, we’re all the same – regardless of the world-threatening devastation, be it zombies, terrorism, or a pandemic virus. World War Z serves as a guide book to humanity, so that when the “big thing” – whatever it is – happens, we’ll be a little more caring of other people around the world, regardless of what god they believe in, or the color of their skin.

For more reviews, and writings, or to buy yourself a copy, please visit www.alexctelander.com....less

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Jamie rated it:

08/06/08

Read in February, 2007

You may remember author Max Brooks (son of famous comedian Mel Brooks, by the way) as the author of another book called The Complete Zombie Survival Guide. I once called that book as "non fiction set in a world where zombies exist." Brooks described in excruciating detail and complete seriousness all kinds of tips for surviving an assault by an army of the living dead. In the sequel, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Wars, Brooks takes it a bit further and gives us a documenta...more