World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War; By Max Brooks
ISBN: 0-307-34660-9

The end was near...
"But the boy jerked again and I heard his left arm snap. Jagged ends of both radius and ulna bones stabbed through his gray flesh. The boy didn't cry out, didn't seem to notice..." Ranging now from the infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trial began with the 12 years 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 Redecker 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 chronic reflects the full scope and direction of the Zombie War. This book is fiction but when you read it, it sounds like the truth.
The book stood out of the shelves and I have the survival guide, that I gotten and had a preview of this book: World War Z. I do recommend this book. It has gore, true stories from people who survived or witnessed this horror... the Walking Dead. The people who would like this book age between 14-40 years old and the type people would be people who like Zombie horror films (very few). It was a page-turner because seeing how the hosts lived through the outbreaks and seeing what they had to say about their story and how the y lived through the outbreaks. It was NOT boring at all because there would have been 56 stories and their plots or meaning. My mind went wandering like crazy but never off the subject. It happens every time at the end of the hosts' story goes wondering what would I do in their place.

*** SPOILERS BELOW!!! ***

If you love zombie lit but are getting bored with viscera and nihilism, this is a great antidote. Brooks has taken his ironically deadpan "Zombie Survival Guide" and made a whole world out of it. Pretending to be an oral history of humanity's struggle against Romero style zombie hordes, this book has a cast of dozens, most of whom speak for only a few pages before yielding to other voices. As a result, we get a truly international view of the great crisis, and the situation and responses faced by people in a variety of settings.

Generally, this works and works well. Zombie fans will be delighted by the variety and unique sets of questions Brooks addresses - what would an armored company do to fight zombies? What happens to zombies in cold weather? What would happen in Korea and Cuba? Traditionalists will be happy at the slow mindless zombies, but they may perhaps miss all the visceral gore common to the genre, as Brooks does not get too messy. This is a fine choice, as if you want messy there are many, many zombie novels available that are based on anatomy texts, but few that manage to be this creative and panoramic.

Some have commented on Brooks' "leftist" politics. This complaint to me is a non-issue. Some US characters do state that disillusionment over Iraq left the US civilians and military incapable and sluggish to respond to the initial zombie plague, but this is not harped upon and the US military and populace do indeed bounce back soon enough. He also does have an Israel / Palestine solution result from the plague, but we see only very little of the end result, and the rockiness of the path towards a two nation solution is portrayed clearly (complete with an Israeli civil war). Brooks also has a clear Howard Dean stand-in become US President, but unless you are a Dittohead, this will probably be only a minor irritant.

More seriously, Brooks has been accused of an anti-military viewpoint and some Amazon reviewers accuse him of only showing "politically correct" characters in a heroic light, with white male soldiers and other authority figures being shown as inept or malevolent. This is an utter calumny, and some of the only narrators with multiple speaking roles are white male US Army soldiers. The Army's initial response was bumbled as shown, but the reasons for the tactical and strategic failures are clear and realistic and the military soon comes up with effective new strategies, which the soldiers heroically and intelligently implement. Many of the most heroic protagonists in these pages are soldiers of different nations, and the hard choices, psychological and physical suffering, and heroism of these characters comes through clearly and fairly.

The occasional statements about right wing militias seizing control of parts of the US and then not freely handing them back to the government are minor plot points and again are not inconceivable. Left wing citizens do not have the firepower or fortified compounds that some extreme right wing folks have, and the same guys that have bunkers and assault rifles stockpiled also are not very friendly to Big Government. Hardly an unrealistic scenario! And along the same lines, Brooks' solution to the zombie plague is very Big Government with centralized micro-management of resources, citizens, and strategy. This strikes me as again being not overly ideological, and also logical and realistic as many real world crises of large scale and complexity (especially in the 20th Century) were solved in the same way.

Finally to address another review complaint, the UN does take over the eventual wrap-up campaign against the zombies, but this is only after most nations have cleared their countries using their own troops under national sovereign command. The UN is only conducting campaigns in those parts of the world that have been too devastated to conduct their own campaigns or are t

I bought this book for my 18 year old son. He couldn't put it down!

If someone had told me at the beginning of 2006 that the best book I'd read all year was about zombies I would have rolled my eyes and told them to beat it. I have a mild appreciation for Night of the Living Dead but have always thought Romero's other work was one long snoozefest.
Usually when fanboys write this kind of fiction it's turgid and self indulgent beyond belief. Quite the opposite here.

Brooks is so at ease with his subject that he effortlessly makes the reader feel they are actually living in the aftermath of a war against the undead,and not in the cosseted 21st century with 300 pages of fiction in their hands. Cultural shorthand as resonant as '9/11' and 'Nagasaki' - single phrases that speak volumes - are introduced with such ease that when they appear again, further into the book, the reader just nods with a knowing satisfaction. Indeed one of these pieces of shorthand - referred to simply as 'Flight 575' - was merely alluded to in passing yet when the name surfaced again I had already constructed a whole backstory to support it.

Where the real triumph of this piece lies, however, is in the different characters Brooks has constructed to voice the story. From feral child, through fey English historian, jaded ex-security guard to fedayeen-turned-athiest the author recounts this epic in a panoply of voices each of them cross referencing each other to weave a fuller picture of the war, and while Brooks is the interviewing thread that holds the narrative together his only prescence on the page is to gently prod his subjects to deliver their stories.

Meticulously researched (I can only imagine how much fun he had looking into the castles of Europe) and passionately written this is screaming out for a wider literary audience.

This book is brilliant for the Zombie buff. If you're too caught up in current affairs don't read it cuz you'll think the author has an agenda. The fact that he does this oral account format shows me that Brooks has a vivid imagination, to be able to create hundreds of different characters like he has, to give such insightful information on different levels and cultures speaks for itself. Its a great mind bending story that actually made you think hmmmmm! There was alot of realism in the short interviews and I for one liked how he touched on certain taboo issues. It is a very quick read, took me about a day and a half to read, couldn't put it down. The ending could have been a little better, however it mite have been left open for the sequal. And being Iranian I hope we don't get nuked again!