Genre Fiction
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World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
#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
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
Editorial Reviews
"An ‘oral history' of the global war the evil brain-chewers came within a hair of winning. Zombies are among us-turn on your television if you don't believe it. But, Brooks reassures us, even today, human fighters are hunting down the leftovers, and we're winning. [His] iron-jaw narrative is studded with practical advice on what to do when the zombies come, as they surely will. A literate, ironic, strangely tasty treat."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Max Brooks has charted the folly of a disaster response based solely on advanced technologies and brute force in this step-by-step guide to what happened in the Zombie War. He details with extraordinary insight how in the face of institutional missteps and greed, people in unexpected ways achieve unique, creative, and effective strategies to survive and fight back. Brooks's account of the path to recovery and reconstruction after the war is fascinating, too. World War Z provides us with a starting point, at least, a basic blueprint from which to build a popular understanding of how, when, and why such a disaster came to be, and how small groups and individuals survived."-Jeb Weisman, Ph.D.,Director of Strategic Technologies, National Center for Disaster Preparedness
"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
"Prepare to be entranced by this addictively readable oral history of the great war between humans and zombies. . . . 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' War of the Worlds radio broadcast. . . . This is action-packed social-political satire with a global view."-Dallas Morning News
"Brooks [is] America's most prominent maven on the living dead. . . . Chilling. . . . It is gripping reading and a scathing indictment of weak responses to crises real and over-hyped."...
"Max Brooks has charted the folly of a disaster response based solely on advanced technologies and brute force in this step-by-step guide to what happened in the Zombie War. He details with extraordinary insight how in the face of institutional missteps and greed, people in unexpected ways achieve unique, creative, and effective strategies to survive and fight back. Brooks's account of the path to recovery and reconstruction after the war is fascinating, too. World War Z provides us with a starting point, at least, a basic blueprint from which to build a popular understanding of how, when, and why such a disaster came to be, and how small groups and individuals survived."-Jeb Weisman, Ph.D.,Director of Strategic Technologies, National Center for Disaster Preparedness
"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
"Prepare to be entranced by this addictively readable oral history of the great war between humans and zombies. . . . 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' War of the Worlds radio broadcast. . . . This is action-packed social-political satire with a global view."-Dallas Morning News
"Brooks [is] America's most prominent maven on the living dead. . . . Chilling. . . . It is gripping reading and a scathing indictment of weak responses to crises real and over-hyped."...
Readers Top Reviews
Robson L. V. Mari
Nao gostei do formato que o livro foi escrito. Sou fan incondicional de estorias de terror e zombie em geral. Fiquei bem desapontado. Acho que foi o primeiro caso na historia em que eu gostei mais do filme do que do livro. Beeeeem mais do filme inclusive. Nao conseguiu me preender. No entanto, fui ate o fim. Uma pena.
dhmRobson L. V. M
I enjoyed the movie but was not satisfied with the deus ex machina. I bought the book hoping to read a more detailed explanation of that. Well, some scenes from the book are used in the movie but not much else. The book is about various cultural responses to solve the same problem. There is no quick solution. I give it 4 stars. The author did a good job of researching the cultures but there was an occasional glaring error. A Chilean speaking refers to the American president as a "gringo". But that is an ethnic pejorative for United Statesians in Mexican Spanish. A language with a worldwide spread, like English or Spanish, has a lot of localized usages. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- For reasons unknown and unknowable Amazon has just sent me an email insisting I review something I already reviewed a week ago.
Alex LeedhmRobson
I could write an essay about all of the reasons why I love this book so much, but I'd rather allow more people to get the most out of it by not spoiling it and just encouraging you to give it a try, regardless of whether you enjoy the zombie apocalypse genre. Max Brook's World War Z is a work of genius that not nearly enough people will recognize as a result of its setting. This novel incorporates geopolitics, philosophical and moral conflicts, and anti-cliches in a relentlessly well paced manner that could never be expected from a post apocalyptic story. It's not only more creative, original, well thought-out, and intelligent than everything else in its genre by a tremendous margin, but the same is true true in comparison to ANY other book that I've read. There are no words that can appropriately emphasize just how well crafted Max Brook's World War Z is. After a decade and a half since its release, nothing else has even come close to being worthy of the praise that this book deserves. Read it.
Bizzle fo Shizzle
People always say "the book is better", and in this case, it is absolute truth. The movie is such a let down in so many ways compared to the book. The book could have literally been taken from page to screen shot for shot and it would have been the best zombie movie ever. It takes place after the zombie apocalypse as humanity rebuilds and tries to recover. Face to face with our failures and successes. Written in a style of interview with survivors on their experiences. The audio book is abridged and lacks quite a few of the interviews. The movie is garbage comparatively and only shares the title. The paperback is how to experience this.
Frederick J. Haab
This is 100% not the movie; the only thing the movie had in common with this book is the title. At least, that's what I believed when I bought it, figuring that the book was good enough that someone wanted to make a movie out of it, but realized how difficult a book like this would be to adapt. I certainly wasn't disappointed; it's simply a collection of various perspectives from dozens of different people who were involved with the "war," giving us perspective about what went on world-wide, as opposed to the extremely narrow view of the world you get with most stories in this genre. This is the one thing I feel like World War Z, the movie, gave us that other movies/shows have not - a world wide perspective of what happens. Other than that, the similarities with the book and movie pretty much end there. It's not a survival story - all the interviews take place post "apocalypse," so they are technically all survivors. We get insights how individuals dealt with the "great panic," how governments handled it, what they did right, what they did wrong, and what are the ramifications of the world-wide pandemic. It's not like some sort of nail biting, edge of your seat drama, but it's an extremely interesting perspective. Given our current global pandemic, it's interesting to see how well Brooks captured so many realistic aspects of how people reacted, so many similarities: deniers/hoaxers, ignorers, government cover ups, people making millions pushing false "cures." It's definitely an interesting book to read during the real pandemic. An honest 4/5 stars - it's a really good book, worth your time if you like the genre, but there are certainly books that are better than this, so it's hard to give a full on 5 stars.
Short Excerpt Teaser
WARNINGS
GREATER CHONGQING, THE UNITED FEDERATION OF CHINA
[At its prewar height, this region boasted a population of over thirty-five million people. Now, there are barely fifty thousand. Reconstruction funds have been slow to arrive in this part of the country, the government choosing to concentrate on the more densely populated coast. There is no central power grid, no running water besides the Yangtze River. But the streets are clear of rubble and the local "security council" has prevented any postwar outbreaks. The chairman of that council is Kwang Jingshu, a medical doctor who, despite his advanced age and wartime injuries, still manages to make house calls to all his patients.]
The first outbreak I saw was in a remote village that officially had no name. The residents called it "New Dachang," but this was more out of nostalgia than anything else. Their former home, "Old Dachang," had stood since the period of the Three Kingdoms, with farms and houses and even trees said to be centuries old. When the Three Gorges Dam was completed, and reservoir waters began to rise, much of Dachang had been disassembled, brick by brick, then rebuilt on higher ground. This New Dachang, however, was not a town anymore, but a "national historic museum." It must have been a heartbreaking irony for those poor peasants, to see their town saved but then only being able to visit it as a tourist. Maybe that is why some of them chose to name their newly constructed hamlet "New Dachang" to preserve some connection to their heritage, even if it was only in name. I personally didn't know that this other New Dachang existed, so you can imagine how confused I was when the call came in.
The hospital was quiet; it had been a slow night, even for the increasing number of drunk-driving accidents. Motorcycles were becoming very popular. We used to say that your Harley-Davidsons killed more young Chinese than all the GIs in the Korean War. That's why I was so grateful for a quiet shift. I was tired, my back and feet ached. I was on my way out to smoke a cigarette and watch the dawn when I heard my name being paged. The receptionist that night was new and couldn't quite understand the dialect. There had been an accident, or an illness. It was an emergency, that part was obvious, and could we please send help at once.
What could I say? The younger doctors, the kids who think medicine is just a way to pad their bank accounts, they certainly weren't going to go help some "nongmin" just for the sake of helping. I guess I'm still an old revolutionary at heart. "Our duty is to hold ourselves responsible to the people." Those words still mean something to me . . . and I tried to remember that as my Deer bounced and banged over dirt roads the government had promised but never quite gotten around to paving.
I had a devil of a time finding the place. Officially, it didn't exist and therefore wasn't on any map. I became lost several times and had to ask directions from locals who kept thinking I meant the museum town. I was in an impatient mood by the time I reached the small collection of hilltop homes. I remember thinking, This had better be damned serious. Once I saw their faces, I regretted my wish.
There were seven of them, all on cots, all barely conscious. The villagers had moved them into their new communal meeting hall. The walls and floor were bare cement. The air was cold and damp. Of course they're sick, I thought. I asked the villagers who had been taking care of these people. They said no one, it wasn't "safe." I noticed that the door had been locked from the outside. The villagers were clearly terrified. They cringed and whispered; some kept their distance and prayed. Their behavior made me angry, not at them, you understand, not as individuals, but what they represented about our country. After centuries of foreign oppression, exploitation, and humiliation, we were finally reclaiming our rightful place as humanity's middle kingdom. We were the world's richest and most dynamic superpower, masters of everything from outer space to cyber space. It was the dawn of what the world was finally acknowledging as "The Chinese Century" and yet so many of us still lived like these ignorant peasants, as stagnant and superstitious as the earliest Yangshao savages.
I was still lost in my grand, cultural criticism when I knelt to examine the first patient. She was running a high fever, forty degrees centigrade, and she was shivering violently. Barely coherent, she whimpered slightly when I tried to move her limbs. There was a wound in her right forearm, a bite mark. As I examined it more closely, I realized...
GREATER CHONGQING, THE UNITED FEDERATION OF CHINA
[At its prewar height, this region boasted a population of over thirty-five million people. Now, there are barely fifty thousand. Reconstruction funds have been slow to arrive in this part of the country, the government choosing to concentrate on the more densely populated coast. There is no central power grid, no running water besides the Yangtze River. But the streets are clear of rubble and the local "security council" has prevented any postwar outbreaks. The chairman of that council is Kwang Jingshu, a medical doctor who, despite his advanced age and wartime injuries, still manages to make house calls to all his patients.]
The first outbreak I saw was in a remote village that officially had no name. The residents called it "New Dachang," but this was more out of nostalgia than anything else. Their former home, "Old Dachang," had stood since the period of the Three Kingdoms, with farms and houses and even trees said to be centuries old. When the Three Gorges Dam was completed, and reservoir waters began to rise, much of Dachang had been disassembled, brick by brick, then rebuilt on higher ground. This New Dachang, however, was not a town anymore, but a "national historic museum." It must have been a heartbreaking irony for those poor peasants, to see their town saved but then only being able to visit it as a tourist. Maybe that is why some of them chose to name their newly constructed hamlet "New Dachang" to preserve some connection to their heritage, even if it was only in name. I personally didn't know that this other New Dachang existed, so you can imagine how confused I was when the call came in.
The hospital was quiet; it had been a slow night, even for the increasing number of drunk-driving accidents. Motorcycles were becoming very popular. We used to say that your Harley-Davidsons killed more young Chinese than all the GIs in the Korean War. That's why I was so grateful for a quiet shift. I was tired, my back and feet ached. I was on my way out to smoke a cigarette and watch the dawn when I heard my name being paged. The receptionist that night was new and couldn't quite understand the dialect. There had been an accident, or an illness. It was an emergency, that part was obvious, and could we please send help at once.
What could I say? The younger doctors, the kids who think medicine is just a way to pad their bank accounts, they certainly weren't going to go help some "nongmin" just for the sake of helping. I guess I'm still an old revolutionary at heart. "Our duty is to hold ourselves responsible to the people." Those words still mean something to me . . . and I tried to remember that as my Deer bounced and banged over dirt roads the government had promised but never quite gotten around to paving.
I had a devil of a time finding the place. Officially, it didn't exist and therefore wasn't on any map. I became lost several times and had to ask directions from locals who kept thinking I meant the museum town. I was in an impatient mood by the time I reached the small collection of hilltop homes. I remember thinking, This had better be damned serious. Once I saw their faces, I regretted my wish.
There were seven of them, all on cots, all barely conscious. The villagers had moved them into their new communal meeting hall. The walls and floor were bare cement. The air was cold and damp. Of course they're sick, I thought. I asked the villagers who had been taking care of these people. They said no one, it wasn't "safe." I noticed that the door had been locked from the outside. The villagers were clearly terrified. They cringed and whispered; some kept their distance and prayed. Their behavior made me angry, not at them, you understand, not as individuals, but what they represented about our country. After centuries of foreign oppression, exploitation, and humiliation, we were finally reclaiming our rightful place as humanity's middle kingdom. We were the world's richest and most dynamic superpower, masters of everything from outer space to cyber space. It was the dawn of what the world was finally acknowledging as "The Chinese Century" and yet so many of us still lived like these ignorant peasants, as stagnant and superstitious as the earliest Yangshao savages.
I was still lost in my grand, cultural criticism when I knelt to examine the first patient. She was running a high fever, forty degrees centigrade, and she was shivering violently. Barely coherent, she whimpered slightly when I tried to move her limbs. There was a wound in her right forearm, a bite mark. As I examined it more closely, I realized...
