World War Z - Sibi Books

Hardcover, 352 pages

English language

Published Jan. 1, 2006 by Crown.

ISBN:: 978-0-307-34660-5
OCLC Number:: 65340967

(1 review)

“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 …

“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’?”

29 editions

projectgus@bookwyrm.social reviewed World War Z by Max Brooks

One for US military enthusiasts

2 stars

Some time in the 2000s I remember stumbling on a lengthy set of Reddit posts asking "what if a force of modern US Marines found themselves stranded in Ancient Rome?". Much of this book is that, but for the zombie apocalypse. If you enjoyed that Reddit series then you'll probably enjoy this in the same way.

At other points in this fictional "oral history" I found myself thinking fondly of the late Studs Terkel's engrossing (real) oral history book Hard Times. I noticed Studs was thanked in the Afterword (along with George Romero, obvs). Hard Times is a classic because it captures different overlapping experiences of the Great Depression in people's own words, recorded by the author with dignity and respect. I think Max Brooks aimed for a fictional form of this, but missed the heart and soul of it - overlapping accounts of the same experience told by real, …

Some time in the 2000s I remember stumbling on a lengthy set of Reddit posts asking "what if a force of modern US Marines found themselves stranded in Ancient Rome?". Much of this book is that, but for the zombie apocalypse. If you enjoyed that Reddit series then you'll probably enjoy this in the same way.

At other points in this fictional "oral history" I found myself thinking fondly of the late Studs Terkel's engrossing (real) oral history book Hard Times. I noticed Studs was thanked in the Afterword (along with George Romero, obvs). Hard Times is a classic because it captures different overlapping experiences of the Great Depression in people's own words, recorded by the author with dignity and respect. I think Max Brooks aimed for a fictional form of this, but missed the heart and soul of it - overlapping accounts of the same experience told by real, ordinary, people. Most of the "interviewees" in this book are generals, war heroes, profiteers, etc - the "ordinary" people are mostly still military or paramilitary.

The book tries to bring a global perspective by including accounts from around the world, but I felt Brooks strained when writing about cultures he doesn't know well. He seemed to fall back on superficial stereotypes (the Japan bits especially, eesh). He appears most at home writing American frontline troops "Gettin' the job done despite those clowns sitting behind a desk in the government", etc, etc. Definitely still cliche, but at least you get the impression he's owning it.

The other limitation of criss-crossing accounts all over the world is that there's little room for character development. A shame, because there are bits of interesting world-building throughout World War Z that you could build a great story around. For example, the refugee floating settlement in the Pacific. This shows up for a half-dozen pages, but I would have happily read a whole story set there and describing the daily lives and experiences of inhabitants. Instead, the book quickly pivots to the next section...

(Maybe I'm taking a book about a global war against zombies too seriously here, but the book takes itself seriously as well so it seems fair.)

Reading this 18 years after it was published did provide one piece of interesting perspective. In the story, the US originally denied and downplayed the outbreak leading to confusion, misinformation, and mismanagement. This account probably came over provocative and edgy in 2006, but compared against the actual events of 2020 it seems understated if anything.

World War Z is not terrible, despite all my complaints I finished reading it. And I can certainly see that there are people who would really enjoy it.

(World War Z was this month's book at my book club.)

Subjects

American Satire And Humor
Fiction
Fiction - Men's Adventure
War & Military
Fiction / General
Humorous
Horror fiction
War stories
Zombies