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’?”
This book scared the shit out of me, in places. And it was so, so well done. I knew it had been well done before the Robopocalypse guy tried to rip it off, but after slugging my way a third of the way into that piece of crap I really know how well this was done. There are fits and starts of twee-ness and implausibility, but I read the book hunched over, brow creased in worry, probably breathing fast, from beginning to end. One of the best books of the 21st century.
If you don't happen to have that particular perverse interest in zombie movies or after disaster stories there is absolutely no reason to read this book, but if you do like this sort of thing. This is a particularly well done zombie story. Mr. Brooks tells the story through a documentarian doing an Oral history after the war is over. So he gets to tell the story through lots of people in lots of circumstances. Much of the book is about how different governments would react to a zombie invasion. I don't think Brooks went for the obvious reactions that governments or individuals might have. He comes up with some truly unique ideas. Some of which I almost wish I never read. If you do happen to read the book his description of a “quisling” freaked me the f**k out. There are several sections that got pretty heavy on the …
If you don't happen to have that particular perverse interest in zombie movies or after disaster stories there is absolutely no reason to read this book, but if you do like this sort of thing. This is a particularly well done zombie story. Mr. Brooks tells the story through a documentarian doing an Oral history after the war is over. So he gets to tell the story through lots of people in lots of circumstances. Much of the book is about how different governments would react to a zombie invasion. I don't think Brooks went for the obvious reactions that governments or individuals might have. He comes up with some truly unique ideas. Some of which I almost wish I never read. If you do happen to read the book his description of a “quisling” freaked me the f**k out. There are several sections that got pretty heavy on the technical description of military equipment and tactics which left me pretty cold (no pun intended). There were several very touching stories. If you are looking for scary, this isn't the right book. I genuinely enjoyed the story with all its flaws.
No real plot, no real characters, no real conflict. If I were teaching a creative writing course, this book would be a great text to use to show kids how not to write.
This book is like ordering ice-cream and receiving a punch in the mouth.
I've been wanting to read this book for a while, since it seemed right up my alley; I love a good apocafic, and zombies are always fun. I made it to page 69 before putting it down with great force--I would have thrown it, except it was a library book.
This book is, as advertised, about the global zombie apocalypse as told by the survivors. You don't stay with a narrative voice very long; each one speaks to the 'interviewer', telling their experience of the global plague, and then moves on. It's not worth becoming fond of any of them, and frankly, not very likely either; personalities only go about as far as classing a person as “stupid,” "naive", or “evil,” with the occasional “if only we'd listened to that farsighted man!”
The personality that comes through …
This book is like ordering ice-cream and receiving a punch in the mouth.
I've been wanting to read this book for a while, since it seemed right up my alley; I love a good apocafic, and zombies are always fun. I made it to page 69 before putting it down with great force--I would have thrown it, except it was a library book.
This book is, as advertised, about the global zombie apocalypse as told by the survivors. You don't stay with a narrative voice very long; each one speaks to the 'interviewer', telling their experience of the global plague, and then moves on. It's not worth becoming fond of any of them, and frankly, not very likely either; personalities only go about as far as classing a person as “stupid,” "naive", or “evil,” with the occasional “if only we'd listened to that farsighted man!”
The personality that comes through the strongest is the writer, not the in-story journalist who has supposedly compiled the stories, but in fact [a:max brooks]. I don't know the man, but from the 69 pages of his writing I already dislike him.
The overall tone I get from this book is 'smug.' I twitched in the introduction when the journalist describes his motivation writing the book; his boss who pays him rejects his first draft which contains the interviews which contain the “human factor”, dismissing them as “too intimate … too many feelings.” Obviously, this boss is a robot-hearted beaurocrat!
Or maybe the journalist is an idiot. He was told to write up a report containing “cold, hard data,” and “clear facts and figures,” and he handed in an oral history? What did he think was going to happen?
I could handle it if the framing device was “idiot-journalist is idiot,” but it's not just him. It quickly becomes apparent that the actual subtitle of this book is “How the people and institutions I despise will doom us all in the upcoming zombie apocalypse.” Nearly every account falls into “Oh, I was so foolish and innocent then!” or “I remain a selfish bastard, and refuse to feel guilty for my actions.” It's like a whole book of stories ending with “And then the entire bus gave me a standing ovation, and the bus driver told me I was his adopted brother.”
AUGH. Look, 69 pages produced that much aggravation. Imagine if I'd finished it.
Such a fun read. The oral history format allows the story to be told in little episodes that come together into the full picture. I have never read anything quite like it. Brilliant, a fun read, very good story.
A great take on the zombie genre. If you like zombies, you will enjoy this book! It is a collection of first person accounts from the beginning of the infection through the end of "World War Z". It was a great read, I could hardly put it down!
Fantastic and enjoyable example of the zombie apocalypse genre, written in a clever "chronological interview" format. It definitely contains horror, but it's an excellent example of the genre.
Very clever "history" of the war against the zombies, told via interviews done after the war was won. I've read that the audio book is a particularly excellent implementation of the actual "tapes" of the interviews.
I'm not a huge Zombie fan. Like couldn't care less about Zombie stuff, the genre is just so played out. BUT. This was a good read, it wasn't over the top zombie and it didn't make it sound like the world is a bunch of idiots who can't escape a shuffling horde.
A great book, first and foremost. This one was recommended to me by a medic I was deployed with. At first I thought it was just going to be a book about zombies, but I have to say that it is extremely well written and seems to parallel current international events.
While I dont want to give anything away, I would definitely recommend this book to zombie enthusiasts but more importantly to anyone who enjoys a well constructed story with characters that you can relate too.
By the end of the book I wasnt thinking wow what a zombie book, I was thinking wow what a story.
Sucked. Only Max Brooks could write a zombie story and make it boring. The "interviewing survivors" narrative was a bad choice. Totally removed any drama or suspense from the stories - you knew everyone was going to live or else they wouldn't be alive to be interviewed! Plus, each character only got a handful of pages at most, not enough space to create in-depth characters. They were mostly stereotypes either because of this or because that's all Brooks knows. Despite the plague being dubbed "African Rabies" in the book, there is only one black character. I can recall two female characters in the book. One, the downed pilot, has a nervous breakdown while running from a zombie hoard and "hears" her dead mother's voice over her radio. The other, Russian soldier, becomes a human incubator spitting out babies. The other characters that seem like average joes but rise to the …
Sucked. Only Max Brooks could write a zombie story and make it boring. The "interviewing survivors" narrative was a bad choice. Totally removed any drama or suspense from the stories - you knew everyone was going to live or else they wouldn't be alive to be interviewed! Plus, each character only got a handful of pages at most, not enough space to create in-depth characters. They were mostly stereotypes either because of this or because that's all Brooks knows. Despite the plague being dubbed "African Rabies" in the book, there is only one black character. I can recall two female characters in the book. One, the downed pilot, has a nervous breakdown while running from a zombie hoard and "hears" her dead mother's voice over her radio. The other, Russian soldier, becomes a human incubator spitting out babies. The other characters that seem like average joes but rise to the occasion are modeled after friends of his father, Mel Brooks, such as the movie director character, based upon Steven Spielberg.
