Hardcover, 352 pages
English language
Published Sept. 12, 2006 by Crown.
“The end was near.” —Voices from the Zombie War
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 …
“The end was near.” —Voices from the Zombie War
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’?”
L'autore è riuscito a rendere interessate un'argomento che non è di mio interesse.
Some time in the 2000s I remember stumbling on a lengthy set of Reddit posts asking "what if a force of modern US Marines found themselves stranded in Ancient Rome?". Much of this book is that, but for the zombie apocalypse. If you enjoyed that Reddit series then you'll probably enjoy this in the same way.
At other points in this fictional "oral history" I found myself thinking fondly of the late Studs Terkel's engrossing (real) oral history book Hard Times. I noticed Studs was thanked in the Afterword (along with George Romero, obvs). Hard Times is a classic because it captures different overlapping experiences of the Great Depression in people's own words, recorded by the author with dignity and respect. I think Max Brooks aimed for a fictional form of this, but missed the heart and soul of it - overlapping accounts of the same experience told by real, …
Some time in the 2000s I remember stumbling on a lengthy set of Reddit posts asking "what if a force of modern US Marines found themselves stranded in Ancient Rome?". Much of this book is that, but for the zombie apocalypse. If you enjoyed that Reddit series then you'll probably enjoy this in the same way.
At other points in this fictional "oral history" I found myself thinking fondly of the late Studs Terkel's engrossing (real) oral history book Hard Times. I noticed Studs was thanked in the Afterword (along with George Romero, obvs). Hard Times is a classic because it captures different overlapping experiences of the Great Depression in people's own words, recorded by the author with dignity and respect. I think Max Brooks aimed for a fictional form of this, but missed the heart and soul of it - overlapping accounts of the same experience told by real, ordinary, people. Most of the "interviewees" in this book are generals, war heroes, profiteers, etc - the "ordinary" people are mostly still military or paramilitary.
The book tries to bring a global perspective by including accounts from around the world, but I felt Brooks strained when writing about cultures he doesn't know well. He seemed to fall back on superficial stereotypes (the Japan bits especially, eesh). He appears most at home writing American frontline troops "Gettin' the job done despite those clowns sitting behind a desk in the government", etc, etc. Definitely still cliche, but at least you get the impression he's owning it.
The other limitation of criss-crossing accounts all over the world is that there's little room for character development. A shame, because there are bits of interesting world-building throughout World War Z that you could build a great story around. For example, the refugee floating settlement in the Pacific. This shows up for a half-dozen pages, but I would have happily read a whole story set there and describing the daily lives and experiences of inhabitants. Instead, the book quickly pivots to the next section...
(Maybe I'm taking a book about a global war against zombies too seriously here, but the book takes itself seriously as well so it seems fair.)
Reading this 18 years after it was published did provide one piece of interesting perspective. In the story, the US originally denied and downplayed the outbreak leading to confusion, misinformation, and mismanagement. This account probably came over provocative and edgy in 2006, but compared against the actual events of 2020 it seems understated if anything.
World War Z is not terrible, despite all my complaints I finished reading it. And I can certainly see that there are people who would really enjoy it.
(World War Z was this month's book at my book club.)
This book is about as 2006 as you can get. It should be studied in a museum for how Americans used to see themselves and the rest of the world at the height of neoliberal self-belief. It is a story written in a world before the GFC, Trump, and COVID.
The best example is China being shown as technologically backwards and administratively inept with their inferior communist government.
The concept is cool, but hard to pull off in an engaging way. Also I can't be the only one confused at how similar every single person sounded. Surely you could get an editor to run through it and help give each individual a unique voice. I didn't even realise some characters had come back at the end without checking their names.
Enjoyable zombie shift, a retrospective on plague through interviews it mostly trades the horror hordes for human stories of disbelief and displacement. War and military get a little too much focus for me, however. The audiobook is a good fit for the format, with a good cast.
The last quarter of the book felt a little slow, but the novel had such a great mix of action-packed accounts and cryptic backstories that I had a hard time putting it down. I find zombie movies boring and samey, but the level of detail and the variety of stories written in this book added a layer of interest I’ve never seen before in any zombie creative work.
Could not put this book down from beginning to end.
Me encantan los falsos documentales, y esto lo parece mucho.
Reconstrucción de la infección, casi aniquilación de la humanidad, guerra mundial y victoria sobre los zombies, mediante una serie de entrevistas a testigos de semejante carnicería. Muy buen ritmo, no se puede soltar.
Un poco desasosegante para leer durante la cuarentena, eso sí.
Pretty fascinating read. So many facets of the zombie apocalypse I would never have thought through.
Listened to the All-Star cast Audiobook. The format lends itself to this medium very well. The characters don't get a chance to develop, but I guess to do so would make the interviews format feel a bit forced
Written like a historical narrative, this book is giving me the satisfaction of knowing that come the zombie attack, I'll be ready. Or a nuclear winter. Or anything else horrible that can happen. Like Angie said, I own an axe and can knit everyone sweaters.
After watching the wonderful World War Z movie, I looked up the book on wikipedia to get additional information on the story. I discovered that the movie is actually totally different from the book, but it sounded fascinating so I decided to check it out. Great decision.
A true movie of the book would be like a Ken Burns documentary. WWZ is essentially a series of first-person short stories on a common theme telling a chronological history of the zombie apocalypse. Some stories are a couple of paragraphs, others go on for a while, but each feels essential.
This is a wonderfully imaginative book, and remarkably well thought out. It is a very believable story; the author really thought about realistic scenarios for a strange plague that must be fought not with medical treatment but with guns and swords.
The book is surprisingly affecting. I'd felt moved by the overwhelming …
After watching the wonderful World War Z movie, I looked up the book on wikipedia to get additional information on the story. I discovered that the movie is actually totally different from the book, but it sounded fascinating so I decided to check it out. Great decision.
A true movie of the book would be like a Ken Burns documentary. WWZ is essentially a series of first-person short stories on a common theme telling a chronological history of the zombie apocalypse. Some stories are a couple of paragraphs, others go on for a while, but each feels essential.
This is a wonderfully imaginative book, and remarkably well thought out. It is a very believable story; the author really thought about realistic scenarios for a strange plague that must be fought not with medical treatment but with guns and swords.
The book is surprisingly affecting. I'd felt moved by the overwhelming sadness, excited by the suspense, and raged by incompetence and uncaring (notable in an interview with a Dick Cheney-like character who tries to justify the government's weak response to the initial threat).
The book also finally let me make sense of The Zombie Survival Guide, which someone gave me years ago and which was also written by Max. If I read it after reading WWZ it would have been, I suspect, far more interesting.
Anyway, if you want an exciting, thoughtful, moving book about zombies, this is the one. As good as the movie but entirely different.
These post-zombiepocalypse vignettes are kind of great but the lack of characters or plot in this book finally wore me down.
This was an excellent read! I can certainly understand why critics have compared Max Brooks with Studs Terkel. World War Z is probably one of my all-time favorites in the genre of post-apocalyptic fiction. Brooks eschews a conventional narrative to tell the story of the Zombie Apocalypse—and for those who watched the film before reading the book (as I did) will be shocked at the stark differences between the on-screen adaptation and the original work. Instead, Brooks frames the book around a series of interviews conducted by the narrator—an assistant for creating the postwar official history of the conflict—that allows the reader to get a global portrait of the conflict as it erupted in places as diverse as South Africa, China, India, the West Indies, North America, and the Pacific Isles. If you have read Stud Terkel's Hard Times or The Good War you will already be familiar with how …
This was an excellent read! I can certainly understand why critics have compared Max Brooks with Studs Terkel. World War Z is probably one of my all-time favorites in the genre of post-apocalyptic fiction. Brooks eschews a conventional narrative to tell the story of the Zombie Apocalypse—and for those who watched the film before reading the book (as I did) will be shocked at the stark differences between the on-screen adaptation and the original work. Instead, Brooks frames the book around a series of interviews conducted by the narrator—an assistant for creating the postwar official history of the conflict—that allows the reader to get a global portrait of the conflict as it erupted in places as diverse as South Africa, China, India, the West Indies, North America, and the Pacific Isles. If you have read Stud Terkel's Hard Times or The Good War you will already be familiar with how Brooks conveys the story of World War Z. It's an engrossing read and often times you have to remind yourself that you are reading a work of fiction. Brooks sets up a lot of realistic scenarios for how different countries reacted to the war and how the a similar worldwide pandemic could influence geopolitics. For example, Cuba's serendipitous geographic position during World War Z turned it into a leading economic force in the postwar reconstruction. Brooks also offers some intriguing commentary on how different organizational military cultures throughout the world adopted varying strategies and tactics to combat zombies—and how this particular war upended a reliance on technological sophistication and elaboration.
This is a must read!
4.5 stars.
Quick question: are zombies fantasy or Scifi? Or both?
Commute audiobook; it was a great one: sufficiently simple to divide my attention with driving, sufficiently engaging to keep me awake on a long drive.
The book:
The gist of WORLD WAR Z, if you aren't familiar, is this: in the not-too-distant future, the relatively few remaining humans are beginning to recover from the recent global zombie war. A government researcher collects a series of personal histories of various events during the war and presents them mostly chronologically w/r/t the war.
As a book that people want to read for purposes of enjoyment, this probably works better as an audiobook than it does in print. As other reviewers have noted, one failing (the only failing?) of WORLD WAR Z is a lack of differentiation of voice between the different characters, which seems a shame given that the characters are …
4.5 stars.
Quick question: are zombies fantasy or Scifi? Or both?
Commute audiobook; it was a great one: sufficiently simple to divide my attention with driving, sufficiently engaging to keep me awake on a long drive.
The book:
The gist of WORLD WAR Z, if you aren't familiar, is this: in the not-too-distant future, the relatively few remaining humans are beginning to recover from the recent global zombie war. A government researcher collects a series of personal histories of various events during the war and presents them mostly chronologically w/r/t the war.
As a book that people want to read for purposes of enjoyment, this probably works better as an audiobook than it does in print. As other reviewers have noted, one failing (the only failing?) of WORLD WAR Z is a lack of differentiation of voice between the different characters, which seems a shame given that the characters are all over the world and from all walks of life. The audiobook has a diverse voice cast -- an allstar cast: Alan Alda, Nathan Fillion, Becky Ann Butler, Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner, Martin Scorcese, Rick Young, Jeri Ryan, Masi Oka, Kal Penn, Common, Alfred Molina, Mark Hamill, etc. The different speakers lend character differentiation where it may be lacking in print.
But it's not just a goofy zombie book. It's also an analysis of the state of global geopolitics, in which no one ever does anything about any problem, for fear of alienating the people who make up their power base, until it's too late. The zombie hordes stand in for any global disaster; it's particularly relevant now given the current ebola outbreak. In WORLD WAR Z, there's a small outbreak of a new infection in a remote part of China, and although all world governments have access to this information no one responds adequately. By the time people start to realize they should take it seriously, it's too late to make use of the simple containment solutions that would have prevented global catastrophe in the first place. This book shows the consequences of the wait-and-see model of governance when applied to a disaster on a scale we haven't yet experienced -- but we might, soon, if we can't get population growth and global warming under control.
The personal histories are narrated by speakers from all over the world and from all walks of life: soldiers, doctors, mercenaries, salesmen, children, suburban moms, politicians, a gamer nerd, etc. The wide range of speakers is essential for effectively communicating the global reach of the disaster. No one is spared. Ignoring what happens to "them" has profound effects on what happens to "us". Other than the war, there's nothing that connects the speakers -- they don't know each other or even cross paths. However, an event described in detail by one speaker may be mentioned in passing by other speakers; or it might not. Many events mentioned in passing are never described in detail. It's not a comprehensive history, and we don't get a comprehensive picture of what the post-zombie-war-world looks like. We have only snippets and snapshots.
It's an effective choice, though, on the author's part, because it means we don't just hear about abstract consequences of the current geopolitical model with charts of numbers and statistics: instead, we experience the human cost; we also experience human ingenuity and bravery. Disaster and war aren't just abstract horrors that affect governmental stability. They are personal.
It's an interesting choice as well because it forces us to think about history as a formal study. People have hidden motives. People omit. People embellish. People lie. People forget: memory is fallible. How accurate are the accounts presented here? Should we accept them as true? Should recalled narratives be admissible as historical data at all, or should we restrict ourselves to the narratives produced during the period in question? Are snippets and snapshots enough to draw conclusions about the Big Picture?
So, why not 5 stars? It's thought-provoking and engaging and I want to tell everyone I know to go find a copy. But for 5 stars, it should never waver; it should be consistently excellent. And frankly there are a few accounts that drag. Only a few; for the most part, it was compulsively readable (listenable?). And I want better character differentiation.
One last thought, re. book vs. movie: the movie is very different. It's much narrower in scope, focusing on one person, and gives a lot of focus to a semi-magical Solution To Save Us All. Whereas the book is much more realistic, giving a global perspective and emphasizing that in the end, when faced with a disaster of this magnitude, all we're left with is brute force.
This book was surprising and I really enjoyed it. It's not your typical zombie action horror thriller fest. It's deliberate, thoughtful and engaging. It feels very real and is an intriguing thought experiment.
