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World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War | 
 enlarge | Author: Max Brooks
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  427 reviews
Sales Rank: 713
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0307346617
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780307346612
ASIN: 0307346617
Publication Date: October 16, 2007
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Product Description
“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
From the Hardcover edition.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 422 more reviews...
 Good job Max Brooks August 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A good effort I must say it in short describes zombie warfare first the outbrack then the panic that follows and finally the determination with which the remaining uninfected population fight back against the invader. There is also almost none of this "superman syndrome" stuff that permeates everything Science Fiction related these days. Over the course of the narrative it is clear that if humanity is going to survive it is going to have to fight as a team.
If I had to pick my two favorite installments it's the exploits of one professional bodyguard on a "Long Island" near New York basically a morality tale about how celebrity is irrelevant in the new world and the story of how Cuba of all places becomes the "arsenal of victory". If some point of views like the former computer nerd and Hiroshima survivor that become the guardians of Japan seem far fetched...well it is a book about zombies and if I were writing a book about the subject I'd have some fun with it too.
It is an excellent book providing a balanced account of the war from all fronts from land based armies to people who spent the entire war on the Open Ocean and even outer space. I would even go so far as to say that it was too short I wanted more.
If I have one compliant however is that whereas most books that run along this kind of theme are usually hampered by a single viewpoint this one while it is good is too cosmopolitan. It seemed that I was just getting to like one character then that point of view would end and we would be on to someone else a different theater of the war. This is not a bad things its just sometimes it can be abrupt.
Overall-Wonderful book I look forward to further installments if there are any.
The "interview" style is tough to pull off but Brooks does a good job of it. August 25, 2008
This follow-up to the Zombie Survival Guide is less campy but some of the survivor interviews contain just enough snark to make you shake your head in amusement. One aspect that is fun is the interviewer narrating his own actions, typically in response to questions from the interviewee.
You get so many different types of people answering questions about their time during the war that you will no doubt have some you hate and some you love. There is a smattering of all types of people being interviewed and if you cross one that doesn't float your boat then you know it'll be over in a couple of pages. This isn't the type of book that has you getting attached to any characters, it is more like a voyeuristic pleasure of other people's misfortune.
We must remember so it never happens again. August 19, 2008
Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (Crown, 2006)
If Studs Terkel were not still alive, I have little doubt that buy now, we'd have already had the companion volume to this book, telling the story of the zombie war from the other side. But Studs still clings to life (he's ninety-six as I write this, and for all I know he's still writing), and so we have only one side of the great Zombie War depicted here. Still, for those of us who lived through it, perhaps that's enough.
What, you don't remember the zombie war? Well, I'm not entirely surprised. Fewer and fewer people do. It's amazing how short our collective memory is. That's part of the reason Max Brooks wrote this book-- so that people wouldn't forget, that they'd have something to hold on to, some artifact they can consult. It's the same reason Terkel wrote his oral history of World War II; we all learn the dates and places in history class, but who ever dredges it up again, unless they go on to become history professors and propagate the same information? Terkel's book tells us what the battlegrounds were like from the perspectives of those, most of whom are now gone, who were actually there. So does Brooks'. No one who reads this will ever hear "Yonkers" and just think of a date and an event. You get an actual veteran telling the story and you can hear the explosions. You can taste the dirt. You can hear the moaning of the enemy. And Brooks captures it, as he captures the many other voices in this tome, by standing back and letting these folks tell it like they saw it.
This is an impressive compendium of voices, now that I'm n the subject. Men and women from around the globe, from the northern wastes of Canada to the South Pole (with the obvious exception of Iceland), offer their stories here. Some of them are still understandably bitter. Some are just angry. Some resilient, some defeated, some poignant. All of them together, give the clearest picture of a global conflict I've ever run across. Max Brooks is, truly, to be commended for his investigative work on this project, and his desire not to let the Zombie War fade until it becomes nothing more than a bad nightmare. For, as we all know, those who do not repeat history are doomed to learn from it. ****
 impressive August 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
i found thst this book to be a well done novel that gave true insight into this fictional event
One Great Ride for Zombie Lovers! August 13, 2008
I was so pleasantly suprised by the quality of Mr. Brook's second book. He clearly has done his homework with so many little details in this story. His understanding of governments, military equipment, geography and human nature are all evident in this story. This creates a rich tapestry on which to superimpose an epidemic of undead cannibals.
One of the best aspects of this story is that Mr. Brook's has truly taken a world's eye view of the conflict. He relates narratives from sources all over the globe including China, Japan, Iran, Indian, the Artic and the good old USA.
A good yarn, if maneating reanimated corpses overrunning the world is your thing!
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