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!