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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: exceeded-my-expectations, popular-culture, hopes-dashed-like-an-egg-on-cement, zombies, kept-me-up-at-night, 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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Feb 24, 2009 Scott rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science-fiction, horror

I don't do a lot of out-of-context book recommending. Most of my little star icons don't mean anything if you don't share my particular love of football, or fantasy, or sci-fi, or history, etc. My usual 5-star is really "5-star IF you like this literary genre". But I would recommend this book, sans context, to anyone.

I'm not big into the horror genre, although there are several horror books that I've enjoyed (and Stephen King's non-fiction 'Danse Macabre', an examination of the popularity and r ...more

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Aug 11, 2010 Louis rated it it was amazing

The fact that the stories of this war is told from different people and different cultures really give this story some weight. Not simply a story of a hero(s) coming in to save the day but a story about how we would deal with it as a species and individually. While in the end it all comes together, maybe, the path that is taken to get there varies greatly. The idea the celebs would still try to hold onto that even as the world collapse around them or how an outcast finds redemption even while ba ...more

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Mar 20, 2009 usagi ☆ミ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: zombies, magical-reality, reviewed, audiobooks, 2009, memoir, happy-bacteria, lol, horror

If you're going to be reading this book, to really listen to its true voice (no pun intended) and get the real flavor of the prose, you simply must listen to the audiobook.

Oral history-fiction is a funny thing. It never seems to come alive as much as as it does when is actually able to listen. As this is the first oral history-fiction genre book I've read through audiobook, this might be an early generalization on my part (I'm planning to try Palahniuk's "Rant" next to see if it holds up to this ...more

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Oct 31, 2012 Chris rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Great book, it is a lot of fun. Also, a really interesting look and how the world might react to a major disaster. Highly recommended if you love zombies, or end of the world books.

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