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.