World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

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“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’? Perfect name. . . . But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!” —Todd Wainio, former U.S. Army infantryman and veteran of the Battle of Yonkers

“Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it? . . . For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth.” —General Travis D’Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe

What Customers Say About World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War:

I have been considering writing a Zombie book, and every few pages of World War Z I think to myself, man, what didn't I think of that. Not sure this would transfer over to a movie at all, but accomplishes what it wants to for sure. The ideas that Max Brooks comes up with are phenomenal. If you can enjoy a zombie movie, you will enjoy this book. It is almost the perfect book for fanatics.

If you have any interest in zombies, this book is for you. It will make you look over your shoulder if you read it at night.

The problem is that Brooks uses exactly the same voice for every character. There are too many good books to read to waste one's time on writing that can't grab your attention in the first 50 pages. The one Arab character profiled is an antisemitic buffoon, and while people like this do no doubt exist, the state of Israel is glorified to an absurd degree. Friends who've read it say it picks up pace later, but I just don't think a zombie apocalypse book can afford to be boring for even one minute.

Theoretically, they had to have been Palestinian, but in practice, they didn't check. Secondly, and this is something I'm sure was not going to change, while the author has substantial geopolitical and general knowledge (the one real strength of the work), he is not a good fiction writer. World War Z is supposed to be an "oral history" of the Zombie War, in the model of Studs Terkel's Working (and other works), which relied on first-person interviews. First, a disclaimer: I gave up on the book after 44 pages. Brooks is a rich, secular, American-born Jew. But what turned my stomach early on was his ridiculously pro-Israeli bent.

You see, ONLY Israel knew to protect itself from the zombie apocalypse. And here's the kicker: That great benevolent state opened its arms to all Arab refugees with a clean bill of health (i.e., who were not zombies) to protect them from what it knew was coming.

Do you think that may have something to do with his contempt for Orthodox Israeli Jews and his fantasy-world belief that Israel really just wants to get along with the Arab world.To be fair, my general impression is that a heck of a lot of thought and research went into World War Z. World War Z did improve, moderately, as I read on (I was ready to give up after about 15 pages), but the author's politics -- which stand in stark contrast to my own -- began to infect the writing to a degree that I knew I would not enjoy the rest of the book.Before going into that, let me first share my apolitical criticisms: To begin, the book is extremely boring.

The secular government of Israel did this against the fervent protest of Orthodox religious Jews, who then started a civil war within Israel. If the character is an Arab, there may be some obligatory "Death to the Jews." stereotyping, but the vocabulary and general manner of speech of literally every character is exactly the same -- that of Brooks.

This made for a very tedious read.Now on to the author's politics: I've seen others complain that Brook is overly "P.C." That may be. But because the Orthodox didn't serve in the military, they were easily crushed.

I just wish all that work could have materialized into something more entertaining and less infected with the author's politics (unless, of course, his politics were correct).

Exactly as it was described and an overall great book to read. It arrived right on time as well.

This is a must read zombie novel. It tells the story of humanity's fight to survive against the zombie hordes.Max Brooks is the author and he has a masterpiece here.

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