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What if George Romero's popular cult film "Night of the Living Dead" was based on fact? What if there really were zombies knocking at your door? Would you know what to do? Would the government know how to protect you from these creatures? This is the basis of a new book by Max Brooks. This is the first book written by Brooks that I've read. And it is quite the story. Even though it's fiction, it's written as if the author was actually interviewing and reporting on the world wide disaster called the Zombie War. AND nobody was prepared for this type of disaster. According to the dust jacket "Mr Brooks subsequently spent years traveling to every part of the globe in order to conduct the face-to-face interviews..." This is a horror story with a strong underlying vein of humor with generous dashes of sarcasm thrown in for flavor. Just my type of read! Since horror stories are one of the most favorite types of books for me to read, I couldn't resist when I saw this novel on the shelf at a local bookstore. I bought it, read it and liked it so much that I'm going to go back to that store and buy a copy of Max Brook's previous book, The Zombie Survival Guide. After all, I used to be a Girl Scout and I want to be prepared. I mean, what if this is really a true story ?!?Read full review
In the midst the pop-culture zombie craze of 2003, Max Brooks published THE ZOMBIE SURVIVAL GUIDE to help people survive the raging hordes of slow-moving, non-blinking undead that were, presumably, about to overrun the world. In this parodic "documentary," he chronicles his own personal experience of the horrific and bloody Zombie Wars that would have long-since rendered Earth empty of human life, had it not been for the heroic groups of resistance that sprang up all over the globe. Size Length: 320 pages Height: 9.5 in. Width: 6.5 in. Thickness: 1 in. Weight: 20 oz. Publisher's Note “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’?” Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission. Eyewitness reports from the first truly global war “I found ‘Patient Zero’ behind the locked door of an abandoned apartment across town. . . . His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he’d rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds. . . . He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls. At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They warned me not to touch him, that he was ‘cursed.’ I shrugged them off and reached for my mask and gloves. The boy’s skin was . . . cold and gray . . . I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse.” —Dr. Kwang Jingshu, Greater Chongqing, United Federation of China “‘Shock and Awe’?Read full review
Let me state first off that I am a Zombie buff. I love the movies and have just recently been drawn to the novels, so my opinion is definitely biased. I purchased this book after reading "the Zombie Survival Guide" also written by Max Brooks. Max's first Zombie book is excellent and a must read, very entertaining. "World War Z", although a good book, left me wanting more. The book is done in a series of short stories, which are being told by actual survivors, who are being interviewed by, you guessed it Max Brooks. The story line and characters were not developed well enough from just sheer volume of the different stories. Do not get me wrong I enjoyed the book, but I fear for those people who are not Zombie buffs they will be dissapointed, especially for $24.95 retail. Of course then again Max was obviously writing the book for his loyal fans anyway. I remain loyal to Max but rate the book a GOOD read and not a MUST read, even for Zombie fans.Read full review
The author Max Brooks is now officially my hero. After The Zombie Survival Guide was published the public craved more. He delivered with this novel. WWZ creates a timeline with interviews covering most of the world's Zombie War survivors and how they reacted to the Zombie Outbreak (Level 4 Infestation.) I also love that an interviewee mentions Mr. Brooks first book, The Zombie Survival Guide as being written by a civilian before the outbreaks, briefly as one of the first books on Zed fighting. This was a well-thought out and journalistic approach to a serious issue. What would the inhabitants of Earth do if an infectious virus spread across the globe at an alarming rate, killing those in it's path, and ressurrecting the victims to become the enemy? I'll tell you... We would re-group and fight back. World War Z, an Oral History Of The Zombie War is on my top ten reads of the decade. Check it out!Read full review
In my perspective, World War Z should be the New York Times # 1 book. I thought this book would be a typical fiction book in chronological format. I was wrong, Max Brooks presentation of the story was ingenious. The story stocks out very strong and has a fairly strong ending. I never thought about skimming through the book, or stopping the book. The book was able to capture my attention and hold it. The ending wasn't as strong as the begining, and could have been a little bit better. A lot of books I've read have started strong and fizzled out. I was really impressed by this book. I read World War Z before I read Max Brook's first book. After reading World War Z, I immediately purchased the Handbook to a Zombie invasion.
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