World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

by Max Brooks

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Prepare to be entranced by this addictively readable oral history of the great war between humans and zombies.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
We survived the zombie apocalypse, but how many of us are still haunted by that terrible time? We have (temporarily?) defeated the living dead, but at what cost? Told in the haunting and riveting voices of the men and women who witnessed the horror firsthand, World War Z is the only record of the pandemic.
 
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, 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.

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE

“Will spook you for real.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“Possesses more creativity and zip than entire crates of other new fiction titles. Think Mad Max meets The Hot Zone. . . . It’s Apocalypse Now, pandemic-style. Creepy but fascinating.”—USA Today
 
“Will grab you as tightly as a dead man’s fist. A.”—Entertainment Weekly, EW Pick 
 
“Probably the most topical and literate scare since Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds radio broadcast . . . This is action-packed social-political satire with a global view.”—Dallas Morning News

• ISBN10: 0307346609
• ISBN13: 9780307346605
• Publish Date: 12 September 2006 (first published 1 January 2006)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Crown
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 352
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780307346605

Reviews

[charlton]

I really liked this book,written from a reporters perspective.It was a compendium of select stories from all over the world from men and women who were in the war.
I thought this was a neat concept and well-written.

[Beth C.]

On the recommendation of a co-worker, as we were discussing likes/dislikes, narrators, etc. for audiobooks, I gave this one a shot. And I was pleasantly impressed. I know I'm late to the party, but it's not the typical shoot 'em up zombie story, but more of a researched account *after* the fact. What REALLY makes this awesome, though, are the different voices for the the different characters. Some are recognizable right off the bat (Alan Alda, anyone?), but others blend into their characters so well that it can be hard to pinpoint who they really are. And even though who are recognizable play their characters so that the knowledge is a positive, rather than a detraction.

This was quite enjoyable overall, and I'm very glad to have gotten the recommendation!

[adamfortuna]

Despite it's awful reviews, I enjoyed the movie for WWZ. It's hard to read a review of it without people mentioning how much it butchered the book. For what it was it was great -- but the book is able to explore on a level that would never work for a movie. The book itself takes place after World War Z, the zombie war. The narrator interviews a series of people from around the world as they elaborate on how they participated in the war. These range from the origins of the disease and how it spread, to how countries adapted with it, to submarines, to how humans faced off and eventually cleaned up after the war.

If you've ever wondered "I like zombies, but what would it be like if we did ?", then you'll truly enjoy this book. It's much less about action and more about strategy and motivations to keep on living.

Wish I hadn't listened to the abridged version. Very enjoyable and thematic though. Might actually read the book to just make sure I get everything.

[celinenyx]

World War Z have had a rocky start. Over the course of two years, I picked up this book over three times. I read the first page, got annoyed, put it down. A few months later, I would be like "how can a first page put you off so much?" and I would again, start at the prologue. After doing this dance for a few times, I decided to be smart, don't read the pseudo-academic crap prologue, and just start the damn book. Apparently this was the magic formula, and I finished the book in a few days.

The world has been overrun with zombies. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is a collection of interviews with zombie war survivors about their experiences with the war. There is no running narrative - just the tiny pieces of introduction to the characters by the interviewer, and sometimes a small interjection of him asking a question.

First things first: the book World War Z is absolutely nothing like the movie called World War Z. They're not similar in any way. Not in form of narrative, the world building, plot, or even the type of zombie. They're so unlike each other, I wouldn't have guessed one was based on the other without the titles being the same.

The interviewees in the book span from the States to Japan, and from France to South-Africa. It does a great job differentiating between different ways in which the zombie crisis effected different countries. In many apocalyptic/dystopian books written by US authors they whip the entire non-American world onto one big pile, and treat us with gems like "the United States of America were the only ones that could withstand the crisis - while the rest of the world crumbles" or "when the USA declared measure X, the entire world from Belgium to India applied it, except maybe in Great-Britain, because everyone knows the Brits are weird". There is always this kind of undercurrent of America-centrism that Brooks fights hard to avoid, and succeeds at to a great extent. He truly tries to incorporate cultural differences into the reactions to the zombie outbreak, in both positive and negative ways, resulting in a relatively balanced world view.

The interviews selected are overwhelmingly of people with a military affiliation. We have everything from soldiers, commanders, officers, higher-ups, navy people, air-force people... You name the flavour of soldier, World War Z has it. I felt this gave such a one-sided view of events. On one hand, it gave a more comprehensive whole to the book, but on the other I'm left unsatisfied. What happened to the normal people? The ones living in cities, but also the ones living in the countryside. What did those in rural parts of Europe do? Or in Africa? Also pressing, why is there no scientific point of view? Why aren't scientists doing their absolute hardest to find a cure, or at least a way to incapacitate the undead on a large scale?

Although World War Z has an extensive scope, it's still rather limited. Not at a single point is there any kind of speculation about where the hell the zombies came from. How can zombies still be walking around after years? Where do they get the energy? It didn't give any plausible answers on any of those questions. The interview format was interesting, but unsatisfying when the bulk of the interviewees are army people talking about their different guns and tanks and suits, all with hard to keep track of abbreviations. Every time I encountered an interesting part, it was over way too soon.

[flybymoonlight]

I've always been a fan of zombie stories and World War Z delivers. I liked that this book was about the classic zombie - slow moving, unintelligent, shoot 'em in the head zombies.

The only negative thing for me the style the book was written in. I liked that the interviews gave a nice overview of the war across the world and how different people adapted to it but I found it made for choppy reading. I had a harder time trying to keep all the stories straight when they were referenced later in the book. The plot flows nicely throughout the book but I found myself wanting more in some places.

All in all, not the best zombie book I've read but if you're a zombie fan, give it a try.

[remo]

ODIÉ la película de Brad Pitt, pero me dijeron que el libro era mil veces mejor y que además lapeli había mutilado brutalmente el libro. Y es cierto. Este libro narra, a través de las entrevistas de un enviado especial de la ONU, cómo la Humanidad casi sucumbió a una plaga que transformaba a las personas en zombis, seres inmortales salvo si se destruye su cerebro. Las primeras entrevistas hablan de la detección, del gran pánico, de las huidas masivas, las derrotas por saturación de zombis antes de que la humanidad comprenda cómo derrotarlos... Luego, a lo largo de la historia (de las mil historias), vamos viendo cómo cada país enfrenta el problema a su manera, desde los sudafricanos que mueven a la población a zonas seguras pero dejan muchos pueblos con gente viva como cebos para que los zombies no los ataquen a ellos, a los norteamericanos, que deciden, una vez asegurada la mitad occidental del país, que hasta que no lleguen al Atlántico no podrán respirar tranquilos, y convierten su defensa en un gigantesco ataque. El libro es entretenido, es mil veces mejor que la peli (la peli en realidad no está basada en el libro, solo coge el nombre y el hecho de que el prota es de la ONU), pero a veces da la sensación de que se deja muchas cosas por contar, no queda clara la cronología de la pandemia, no quedan claras las causas, el estudio del virus, no queda claro cómo funciona la infección... Por lo demás, recomendable y entretenido.

[kimbacaffeinate]

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks reads like an actual documentary. The tale is told in third person and the writer shares his interviews with survivors. He interviewed hundreds of people from across the globe. The testimonies of these men, woman and children offer a glimpse into the horror that occurred. We learn how military and government agencies all over the world handled this epidemic/war. How powerful governments with ultra cool weaponry found these devices useless against the enemy. He takes us into the lives of civilians and their harrowing account of survival. How ill equipped we really were. We read soldiers accounts and learn about the aftermath and rebuilding. They share first hand accounts of where the first outbreak began and how individual governments covered these outbreaks up. How greed spread the epidemic. These accounts will have you sleeping with the lights on.

Here is a part of one such interview:
“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

World War Z isn’t the type of novel you read in one sitting. It is broken up into individual interviews. Some are a few paragraphs and others several pages long. I would read a few testimonies and then set it down to reflect. While the beginning was a little shaky for me (felt dry like a history book) stick with it, because you will not regret it, in fact you will probably re-read this. It makes you question everything about what would occur if such an epidemic broke out today. Would I be equipped to survive? Would the government consider me expendable? How would I feed my family? How far would I go to protect them? *shivers* Could I sacrifice a 100 people to save 500?

Brooks is a powerful writer with a wickedly good imagination, a knowledge of war, and the talent to give each witness a unique voice and personality. The images he brought to life with his pen equally amazed me and horrified me. The testimonies were so believable, the emotions so genuine, that I had to remind myself that it wasn't real...or at least not yet. Parts of this novel can be graphic, but war is never pretty. These zombies aren't cute, and there is no love triangle, but you will see plenty of bone-chilling, zombie stomping, action!

[katie-wordsforworms]

Since "The Walking Dead" has such short seasons, sometimes Zombie fans have to supplement with literature. This book is a Zombie-licious good time.

http://wordsforworms.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/zombie-apocalypse/

[arronkau]

Good way to kill 6 hours while you're driving from Baltimore to Boise.