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World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Max Brooks

Start date: June 7, 2010

Finish date: July 15, 2010

Discussion: 2010 Reads

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What Members Thought

Dec 02, 2011 Brad rated it liked it

Shelves: popular-culture, exceeded-my-expectations, kept-me-up-at-night, zombies, hopes-dashed-like-an-egg-on-cement, imaginary-history

I had three responses to World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Here they are:

Surprised: I didn’t expect to like World War Z at all. I’m not even sure why. I like Brooks’ parents, so that shouldn’t have negatively impacted my expectations. I’ve loved Zombies since first I saw Return of the Living Dead in the movie theatre, so I was predisposed to like this book. So I dunno. But I had low expectations, and they were thoroughly exceeded.

It is a great idea, and Brooks’ total commitment to I had three responses to World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Here they are:

Surprised: I didn’t expect to like World War Z at all. I’m not even sure why. I like Brooks’ parents, so that shouldn’t have negatively impacted my expectations. I’ve loved Zombies since first I saw Return of the Living Dead in the movie theatre, so I was predisposed to like this book. So I dunno. But I had low expectations, and they were thoroughly exceeded.

It is a great idea, and Brooks’ total commitment to his mock history was convincing. There were times when I couldn’t help letting my imagination run to a parallel universe where this War had actually happened.

The best part, though, was the places Brooks took his Zombiepocalypse – places only The Walking Dead has even approached. Most Zombielit is about the outbreak. The Walking Dead takes the next step, letting us see what it would be like to be a survivor of the outbreak, what it would be like to live during the Zombie occupation, but Brooks gives us the aftermath. How he hell does the earth rebuild after something like that? Brooks takes a pretty convincing stab at imagining how, and it isn’t pretty, nor is it even all that inspiring. I buy it, though.

Fulfilled: My low expectations didn’t extend to the Zombie violence. Even with the oral history format, I expected gore and grotesquery and nastiness, and I got exactly what I expected. There were even a couple of kick ass violent – and not so violent – superlatives, like the marine-Zombies attacking divers, the madness of Yonkers (a pretty impressive moment, actually), the greed of Breckenridge Scott and his Phalanx, and the Redeker Plan (along with the Redeker Twist – which was my absolute favourite part of the book).

Disappointed: Once Brooks blew apart my low expectations with some strong writing and brilliant ideas, he created a new expectation – and a very high one that he failed to deliver on.

Brooks attempted to make his book a global chronicle of the Zombie War, and he populated World War Z with characters from nations on every continent. By the end of the book, though, they were homogenous. The Japanese folks didn’t sound Japanese. The Russian folks didn’t sound Russian. Everyone sounded American. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Brooks gave in to the temptation to make America and their “great” President the saviours of the human spirit. Yep, the Yankees led the charge to defeat the Zombies, to take the war to the Zacks rather than hiding in their fortresses and embracing safety.

We bought an antique piano today, and we were comparing middle C on our dreadfully out of tune piano and our electronic keyboard. The warbling shred of the antique piano made the kids sad because they wanted to sit down and play, but they knew they couldn’t until the piano is tuned. That sadness is exactly the way I felt about Brooks’ decision to make the USA the heroes of his War, but there’ll be no chance of a tune up to take away my sadness.
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May 05, 2012 Joe Caldwell rated it really liked it

I really enjoyed this book. But don't go into it thinking, "I love zombie stories." this is not that type of book. There's no REAL tension or feeling of terror. But this is addressed early on when it points out that the zombie war is over, the humans won and the people being "interviewed" survived. The story is more about survival and how humans won. ...more

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Feb 12, 2010 Ryan Burt rated it really liked it

I tried to start reading this book several times but couldn't get into it the way the story was written. I finally got an audible version of this book and it was much more enjoyable for me.

I do like a good zombie story. This was told differently than some but still once you get into it worth the read (or listen). ...more

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