|
| World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War | 
 enlarge | Author: Max Brooks
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $8.38
You Save: $6.57 (44%)
New (49) Used (30) from $7.45
Avg. Customer Rating:  441 reviews
Sales Rank: 479
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
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Unread Book In Excellent Condition. No Creases On Covers Or Spine. Same Day Shipping !!! P
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
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.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 436 more reviews...
 A classic piece of horror and apocalyptic writing September 12, 2006
450 out of 501 found this review helpful
I was one of many who heard about Max Brooks' satirical guide book The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. Being a huge fan of George A. Romero's Dead series of films and just the zombie subgenre in general, I was intrigued by the release of this guidebook. From the first page to the last I was impressed, entertained, and hooked on Brooks' serio-comic take on how to survive a zombie outbreak. One section of the book which really caught my interest and has remained a favorite to reread over and over was the final one which details the so-called "historical" instances of past zombie outbreaks throughout history. From as far back as Ancient Egypt and Rome up to the late 1990's. My only gripe about that section of the book was that it was all-too-brief. I felt that it could've been made longer and even would've made for a fine book on its own. Maybe I wasn't the only one to have wished for such a thing to happen for it seems that Brooks himself might have thought the same thing. His latest book in his trip through the zombie genre is titled World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War and it takes the final chapter of his previous book and expands on it. But instead of using past "historical events" to tell his story Brooks goes into the near future to describe what would happen if the zombies ever did bring the human race to the brink of extinction and how humans finally learned how to fight back and take back the world.
World War Z is a fictional account of a worldwide outbreak of the living dead in the near future and judging from some of the descriptions of places and events in the beginning of the book it won't be too far in the future. WWZ is done in an interview-style format with each chapter consisting of first-person interviews of individuals who lived through the Zombie War from its initial outbreak to it's final battles and mop-up operations. The sampling of survivors interviewed range from soldiers who fought the losing battles in the early going of the war when lack of information, outdated tactics, and illogical reactions to the zombie outbreak contributed to humanity almost losing the war. These soldier survivors explain how humanity became its own worst enemy when it came to protecting its own and combatting the growing ranks of the zombies. Some of the mistakes were unavailable as information on how to combat the zombies were far and few and even then most were unreliable. Some mistakes on the other hand many today would consider as unconscionable as war-profiteers and those willing to put keep a hold on their own power would sacrifice their own people to keep it so.
There's also regular people who survived the war and who made great contributions during the dark days when humanity were pushed into isolated and fortified pockets of resistance as everywhere around them the zombie army grew exponentially. Some of these people were just children when the outbreak first began as rumors and unsubstantiated news reports. It's the words of those children now adults that show how war and conflict really takes the biggest toll on the smallest and helpless. One could substitute the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, The Balkans and even Africa in lieu of Brooks zombie war and this book would still resonate. There's a particular entry of how children left to their own devices to try and survive alone in the wild with zombies all around have turned feral to the point that their capacity to learn and develop into adulthood has become stunted or even halted permanently.
Brooks' novel also puts in little veiled references to the events occurring now in the real world. There's mention of the unpopular war in the Persian Gulf as having a detrimental effect on the morale of troops once they returned home and how this helped make the initial fight to stem the tide of the zombies a losing proposition from the outset. There's also mention of Iran as having acquired a nuclear arsenal and how this leads to an incident early in the Great Panic of the zombie outbreak that speaks volume of what could happen if unstable states acquire weapons of mass destruction. Brooks' also gives a prescient look into a near future where the US and Europe stop being the economic superpowers of the world and step aside for the economic juggernaut that is China and India. All these inferences of today's geopolitical and economical events mirrors what might just come into fruition.
The interview format really gives the book a sense of realism despite the outrageous and fantastical nature of the book. As I read the book I was reminded of Stephen A. Ambrose's books on the men and women who fought during World War 2. Ambrose also used interviews and personal accounts to make up the bulk of his books like in Citizen Soldiers and Band of Brothers. Having a personal take on the events gave his books more emotional impact and really brought the emotions of the conflict to those who never experienced it. The same could be said about Max Brooks' World War Z. Even though it's fictional thru and thru it still made the reader think of how such an event, if it ever came to pass, could be so tragic, disheartening but in the end uplifting as it once again shows that humanity could still pull itself together through all its petty misunderstandings to survive. On a more stylistic point, Brooks' novel shares some similarities to Theodore Judson's sci-fi epic Fitzpatrick's War. Judson's book also tries to chronicle a future war which was shaped by religious and ideological forces. Where Judson goes way into the future of an alternate Earth, Brooks smartly stays to a more forseeable future that readers of his book would most likely see happen; hopefully a much brighter and less-zombified one.
Brooks' decision to forgo the usual linear and narrative style for this book also allowed him a certain bit of freedom to introduce one-shot characters in addition to those who appear regularly. In a more traditional novel such one-shot characters would seem useless and even unnecessary, but in this interview format it makes more sense since it's really just a collection of personalities trying to describe their own take of the Zombie War they lived through. Some people I know who have read advance reader's copies of the book (I was lucky enough to procure an ARC copy myself months in advance) have said that there's little or no talk of love and relationships in World War Z. I for one was glad that Brooks didn't try to force certain "interviews" where it talks of survivors finding love and relationships during the outbreak, through the war and all the way to the mop-up. This book chronicles tales of survival and horror. As much as a tale of love would've been a change of pace to all the death and horror in the interviews it would've been too drastic a change of pace. I would think that the last thing that most people would have in their minds when trying to survive day-to-day, if not hour-to-hour would be to stop for a moment and have sex, cuddle or other less-than survival behaviors.
All in all, Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War takes a serious look at a fictional and fantastical premise and event with a serious eye. The book manages to be tragic and terrifyingly sot-on about how the world governments today could fail when confronted by such a horror of tremendous proportions. Unlike his funnier first book on the zombie subject, World War Z shows the flaws and failings of humanity and how it almost led to its extinction, but it also shows humanity's stubbornness in the face of total annihilation and how it could come together in cooperation to not just survive but take back the world. In times of extreme adversity man can be brought to his knees but also show his resilience. A great novel and one that deserves reading from not just fans of the horror and zombie subgenre, but those who enjoy taking a peek into what could be, no matter how outrageous.
What an amazing book! September 14, 2006
159 out of 200 found this review helpful
Like several other reviewers, I read and enjoyed Max Brooks' 'Zombie Survival Guide', but I was skeptical as to whether he could strike gold twice in a row. Much to my satisfaction, the answer was yes.
World War Z isn't so much a novel as it is a collection of very personal recollections of people who have lived through - literally - hell on earth. In a way, it reminded me of news footage of these walls you see where, during a civil war, or natural disaster, people go and leave notes for loved ones, hoping someone, anyone, will see them. Every time I see something like that, it strikes me as hopeless and desperate, but at the same time noble and uplifting. In short, what makes us human. This book gave me the same reaction. I preordered it from Amazon, received it this morning, and finished it about an hour ago. I wish I'd rationed it out a bit, because I didn't want that feeling to end - the feeling of reading the accounts of some of the bravest souls who (n)ever walked the earth.
The only other book I've read that comes close to this in 'feel' is Warday, by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka. But even that is too one-sided; the authors' own opinions and views are clearly dominant. In World War Z, each individual vignette is unique and special; from Tibetan smugglers to dirigible pilots to ex-politicians, each 'interview' has its own distinct voice.
In closing, I'd just like to say that while George Romero may be the father of the 'zombie genre', Max Brooks may well exceed him. Blasphemy? Nope. Just my opinion. One that is hopefully shared by millions of others.
PS: Here's hoping they don't butcher it when they make the movie! :D
Like a good Romero zombie movie, but better! January 16, 2007
74 out of 85 found this review helpful
*** 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 too isolated or large for nation state operations. Again, not leftist so much as it is pragmatic and realistic.
Sorry to go into the "politics" of zombie wars so much here, but the unifying theme of most criticism of Brooks is that he is too left-wing. As I hope I've shown, I disagree with that assessment and most importantly these politics such as they are have no main bearing on the plot of quality of the book.
Finally, the best things about "World War Z" to me are the quality writing, the surprises of the plot and scenarios, and also the poignancy of the emotional impact. As stated above, the experiences of the combat soldiers are deep and moving, and other sections like the struggle of a pilot trapped behind "enemy lines" and best of all, the K-9 handler's tale are brilliantly done and add both pathos and innovation to portrayal of human experience during the Zombie Plague.
The only poorly done section of the book struck me as the Japan part, with a computer nerd hero who is literally glued to his PC until zombies break down the door. He fumbles his way to escape, discovers a katana, and becomes a samurai ginsu machine, slicing and dicing his way through undead hordes. Finally he meets a wise old sensei who also happens to be blind and an impressive master of zombie fu in his own right. The wise old guy helps the ex-nerd become a warrior monk and the two found an order of swordsmen to save Nippon... Other than a guest appearance by Godzilla and / or giant robots, there is little that could be added to this section to make it seem more cartoonish and cliched, perhaps a sign that Mr. Brooks is capable of wedging his tongue a bit too firmly into his cheek, to the point where his story-telling is impaired. But this is maybe 10 pages out of 400, and the good stuff far outweighs the bad.
All in all, I think this book is brilliant and highly recommend it. The innovation of Brooks's plotting is pared to an optimistic pragmatism that stands in stark contrast to the bleak nihilism of most zombie books. Human society and its components, humans, are ultimately shown to be resilient, intelligent, and even noble. The usual zombie books (c.f. Brian Keene's gore encrusted potboilers) usually show humans being as bad or worse than their ghoulish opponents, with human institutions like governments and armies collapsing into non-existence or brutal predation of ordinary civilians. Brooks dares to think differently and his book is a breath of fresh air.
Brooks gets the details right, tells a fine story, and makes the Zombie War seem very real. Zombie fans need to read this, and non-genre fans with some familiarity with the zombie plague concept will also probably enjoy this. No significant flaws, many many virtues!
 Good idea. Worst. Execution. Ever. September 15, 2006
47 out of 156 found this review helpful
At last, a book for those who feel that the living dead rising from the grave to devour and destroy the living will, obviously, usher in an era of leftist-progressive utopia.
No, really. Zombies attacking world-wide would obviously solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem by producing a viable two state solution, right? I think we could all see that one coming from a few miles out. And that's just the tip of the iceberg as the world degenerates into a non-stop fit of inexplicable, unrealistic and (in the face of a zombie rising) just plain silly behavior.
World War Z consistently derails itself by losing focus on the issue at hand to go off on snide political asides, both large and small.
As another reviewer already noted, we are told that the "last brushfire war" (for which, read: Iraq) left the US too war weary to do anything but roll over and play dead when the undead hopped up intent on brain eating. We're also told that the military could not fill its ranks because too many veterans were bitter about having to serve in said brushfire war (never mind the US military actually having little problem meeting recruiting goals) -- and are somehow given to understand that a draft would not be instituted in any case with a massive rising of the undead.
But, gentle reader, have no fear! In the power vaccuum of poor war weary America steps the United Nations. Ironic, for an organization whose main claim to fame has been enabling genocide in places like Rwanda, the Sudan, and the Balkans, we are given to understand that the UN successfully leads the charge to fend off the zombie hordes.
In summary, this book is twenty dollars and several hours of my life I'm never going to get back. Apparently for readers who have not suffered enough in the reading, expect a big budget movie version sometime soon (Hollywood, of course, apparently loves this thing) to deprive you of another couple hours of your life.
Grade -- F. Really, if you are thinking about reading this book, save yourself the pain and just go watch Romero movies or something. Certainly this book is not a fitting follow up to the author's previous (and entertaining) Zombie Survival Guide.
Yawn of the Dead July 10, 2007
41 out of 86 found this review helpful
You hunker down, shaking and in a cold sweat, deep underground, your face lit only by the flickering luminesence of the CRT screen. Reports from your Team---dispatches from the few field soldiers left in the locked-down bioweapons complex, miles beneath an irradiated surface overrun by the flesh-hungry Living Dead---look grim.
The news is not good. The Main Level Hatch was somehow breached hours ago. Sector 13 is totally overrun, Lab Level contaminated, the infected eggheads now hungry for a different sort of brains. Doc Lavinov said the Dead can't crawl, but judging from the video-feeds coming from the air-duct security cams---well, looks like Doc was wrong.
They're coming through the big air vents. They're almost here. Soon you will be faced with an impossible mission.
What is it, you ask? Will you have to crawl 30 stories up an active nuclear silo & squeeze yourself into the command gantry, to launch a final strike against the Zombie plague from Hell's dark heart?
Will you have to race against time to concoct a zombie anti-virus? Design a special napalm launcher to burn your way to the surface? Hotwire a VTOL super-jet? Fake the zombies out?
NEGATIVE, soldier! None of the above! Your Mission Impossible: write a book that will make Humanity's War against the Zombie Menace staggering, mind-blastingly DULL. Dull as a turnip!
Sounds impossible, yes? I don't think so, soldier!---Max Brooks, son of Mel & author of the reasonably amusing "Zombie Survival Guide", has done just that.
Brooks cooks up "Z" as a firsthand account of the Zombie plague as it boils up out of China to ravage the world, related through a series of post-war interviews with the War's survivors: military techs from Russia, naval officers aboard a rogue Chinese nuclear submarine, a dastardly biotech billionaire, the former Vice President of the US, the Chinese doctor who examined the elusive "Patient Zero"---and so forth.
Sounds interesting & novel, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. Max Brooks's "World War Z" boasts the dubious distinction of turning the end of the World as we know it into a really tedious read.
Really, if you want to know what reading "World War Z" is like, it's like filing your income tax return, eating Lima Bean & Mayonnaise Casserole, winning a 40 dollar shopping spree at a dollar store, and playing your great-grandfather consecutive games of checkers for a three-week jag, all at the same time. I would rather sever my own arm and eat it raw than ever read this book again.
It's not hard to figure out what went wrong here:
1) Interviews aren't exciting. They're post-war, which pretty much kills the apocalyptic fear-factor girding the loins of most flesh-eater romps. If somebody (boring) is talking to a (boring) interviewer, then we made it. We survived.
Go team. Knowing we made it---well, how would "Night of the Living Dead" have played if the flick started out with Ben and Barbara yakking it up about their 'close shave' from their timeshare in Rio?
Exactly.
2) Brooks simply isn't able to create vivid, distinct, living, breathing characters. Result: every interview sounds the same. Same 'voice', same slang, whether you're talking to a Valley Girl or a Chinese nuclear scientist.
3) Worse still, Brooks just can't write: I mentioned that all the character voices sound the same. That's true, but it gets worse: they're all voiced by---well, let's just call him Mr. Bland. Mr. Bland is front-&-center on every page of World War Z.
If you dig the level of writing you find on the back of a pillbox or in a late-night real estate infomercial, you'll dig Mr. Bland. Hey, World War Z might be the book for you!
Worse, Brooks hasn't bothered to do the minimal background research (not into the Living Dead, silly---they don't exist---I'm talking geography, military tactics, the works), and that further strains the narrative. Suspension of Disbelief I can dig. Brooks asks you to launch your Disbelief into Orbit.
Case in point: the Battle of Yonkers, where the US military is overrun by the Living Dead. Why? Because the brass fights the thing like it was the set-piece from Day the Earth Stood Still. By piling everything---armor, artillery, hovercraft, jarheads, the works, baby---into one alley in Yonkers and waiting for the zombies to eat everybody. Oh, and they also decide this one single battle is gonna be it, because hey, why worry about having a backup plan.
Oh, and they forget to bring enough ammunition. Seriously.The US army getting caught off guard and overrun by running zombies? That I can see. The US military getting chomped by critters that a 98-year old palsy victim with a decent walker could outrun? I don't think so.
Anyway, the Hell of it is that the 'War' is all wrapped up about 1/3rd of the way through; the rest is a sort of post-apocalypse walk through the nifty big government "New Deal" style social programs the survivors set up afterwards. If you're the kind of person who digs on crop reports and reading the minutes of the local Daughters of the Revolution Knitting Society, you'll probably find this stuff lively & engaging.
Bottom line: If you are a baked potato, or find yourself saying things like "gosh, I think it's time to re-read 'Farmers Almanac 1997 again', you might enjoy this book.
Otherwise avoid, unless you're really looking for a novel way to get your Z's---and I'm not talking about the undead kind.
JSG
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
