Max Brooks

an oral history of the zombie war

World War Z

An account of the decade-long conflict between humankind and hordes of the predatory undead is told from the perspective of dozens of survivors who describe in their own words the epic human battle for survival.

An Oral History of the Zombie War

High Fidelity

Freedom isn’t just something you have for the sake of having, you have to want something else first and then want the freedom to fight for it.

Marty chose, instead, to show the other side, the one that gets people out of bed the next morning, makes them scratch and scrape and fight for their lives because someone is telling them that they’re going to be okay. There’s a word for that kind of lie. Hope.

Many psychobiographers have tried to label him a racist, but, in his own words, “racism is a regrettable by-product of irrational emotion.” Others have argued that, in order for a racist to hate one group, he must at least love another.

Oh, c’mon. Can you ever “solve” poverty? Can you ever “solve” crime? Can you ever “solve” disease, unemployment, war, or any other societal herpes? Hell no. All you can hope for is to make them manageable enough to allow people to get on with their lives. That’s not cynicism, that’s maturity. You can’t stop the rain. All you can do is just build a roof that you hope won’t leak, or at least won’t leak on the people who are gonna vote for you.

“Fear,” he used to say, “fear is the most valuable commodity in the universe.” That blew me away. “Turn on the TV,” he’d say. “What are you seeing? People selling their products? No. People selling the fear of you having to live without their products.” Fuckin’ A, was he right. Fear of aging, fear of loneliness, fear of poverty, fear of failure. Fear is the most basic emotion we have. Fear is primal. Fear sells. 

“Evaluation”…that’s what happens when it’s your own side. It’s only “interrogation” when it’s the enemy. They teach you how to resist the enemy, how to protect your mind and spirit. They don’t teach you how to resist your own people, especially people who think they’re trying to “help” you see “the truth.”

An account of the decade-long conflict between humankind and hordes of the predatory undead is told from the perspective of dozens of survivors who describe in their own words the epic human battle for survival, in a novel that is the basis for the June 2013 film starring Brad Pitt. Reissue. Movie Tie-In.

Want to lose your faith in humanity? Read this book.

Here is a list of the few things you might pick up:

- How to be cynical about everything: the role of the political system and the pharmacy industry in the epic corruption and money making chain.
- How to make money during the zombie outbreak.
- Whatever will the Kardashians (or other useless celebrities) do in the apocalypse.
- How to tell if your government is using you as live bait.
- How to trust NO ONE, not even that nice lady from church, or whatever.
- Coping with cannibalism: a Z-world cookbook.
- A rough outline of impacts of a possible world-wide infection so you can calculate just how screwed you are in your current case (seriously, you would probably be one of the first Z’s dragging your limbs, searching for brains at your local bus stop)
- A wide range of mental disorders you most likely will develop under the immense stress of flesh eating ghouls and the crumble of the society as you know it.
- Why dogs are the best animals ever. EVER.

I mean, what else would you want from a book?

Brooks, author of the straight-faced parody "The Zombie Survival Guide," tells the story of the world's desperate battle against the zombie threat with a series of first-person accounts by various characters around the world.

Stephen Campbell

Big fan of this almost sociological type of storytelling.

Coleman McCormick

My streak of apocalyptic fiction continues.

I love how World War Z looks at a global cataclysm through the prism of different cultures and economies around the world. It's an interesting study in how different people would respond to a disaster in which everyone (the whole globe) is affected.

Cheri Fuller

I enjoyed the production. It was interesting. That's about all I have to say.

Sabanar

It was a good read- some of the peoples stories like the submarine one were really interesting and made me wish they were full books. Other stories were a bit boring. The book also had some parallels to whats been happening with Covid.

jiveen liew

I enjoyed this way more than I expected. I recommend reading it in conjunction with the audiobook. I wish I did from the start. 
The book has interesting lil footnotes and the audiobook is incredibly well-produced and well-acted. Fun experience overall.

Corey Olsen

Liam Dyer

Zombie shit is usually pretty dumb since we all know the tropes by now. Misfit groups of survivors wandering around the apocalypse and all that. 

This is more of an imaginative speculative work on how our societies and politics would respond to a fantastical situation. All the characters seem pragmatic and sensible. It's like a long "what if..." conversation with someone who knows a bunch about geopolitics. In that way it's more comparable to alternate history novels than your typical apocalypse narrative. 

If reading the minutiae of how effective modern military hardware would be against zombies sounds appealing to you you'll devour this. The bit about the dachshunds is quite touching as well.

Alyssa 

it was okay. was more interested in the civilians' survivor's stories that that of the soldiers. :/

Isabela H 

This just took wayyy too much effort to read. It was really fun in the beginning to get all the different points of view but at some point, it all just started feeling like not-fun work

Kirsten Simkiss

Honestly, this book deserves 4.5 stars in my opinion. However, in lieu of not having half stars, I've downgraded to 4 stars because it just wasn't up to my 5 star standard. 5 stars, for me, are for favorites that I could read again and again.

I would also like to preface this by saying that the book and the movie are completely separate beasts. I promise, they're almost completely different. Aside from the occasional tidbit they included, most of what is in the movie is completely original and not based at all on the book. However, I fully enjoyed both. So, basically, if you're worried about being spoiled by watching the movie first, trust me when I say that neither book nor movie will spoil your experience of the other.

A lot of people seem to not enjoy the format of the book, which is interviews of those that served and survived during the war. While I have seen others complain that the voices of the survivors are often quite similar to one another, I was willing to brush that to the side for two reasons. One, it's all coming from the same original source: the author's brain. Two, it takes a certain type of person to be able to survive something like that, let alone talk about it to some stranger. The story of the war carried itself throughout, which was the important thing.

Although it never really explains what started the plague of undead in the story, it was interesting how the author took certain things into consideration. How people would react, how countries would react due to their culture, what weapons people would have on hand, etc. I also liked how some of the stories were left open to the reader's interpretation. For example, the story about the pilot getting directions from the Mets Fan. (If you haven't read it yet, you'll see what I mean when you get there.) Also the story about the K-9 unit and morality. A lot of the stories center on what was done to survive, as immoral as it may have been, and how it affected those who survived, both during and after the zombie threat.

All in all, I definitely wouldn't hand this to anyone under thirteen, but aside from your typical zombie movie content, it wasn't as violent as it could have been. I found the technical weaponry jargon to be a little much at times, but I suppose that those who use all these weapons probably liked that. I would recommend this to others, provided they know that the book is made up of interviews and doesn't feature main characters or cures like the movie.

Ahmed Salem

هناك طريقة تقليدية في الرواية. أنت تعرفها جيدا. مقدمة للأحداث و الشخصيات ، يتبعها تطورات، يتبعها عقدة و تنتهي بحل للمشكلة

هناك روايات اتبعت طرق مختلفة و ذكية: أعطيك هنا منها لمحة.

الحرب في بر مصر (يوسف القعيد): حيث تأتي الرواية في صورة فصول مسرحية. كل فصل يتحدث شخصية ما عن من هو و طبيعة العلاقة بالأحداث ... و يبدأ ببطئ محبب للقلوب تتشكل الأحداث امام ناظريك

 الفتاة على متن القطار (بولا هوكنز): هنا تتابع الأحداث بين أحداث في الماضي و الحاضر و كل فصل يضم تاريخ و توقيت دقيق للأحداث. يجب عليك التركيز الدقيق في تتابع الأحداث و الا سيفوتك قطار الأحداث و قطار الأدرينالين

روايتنا هنا هي خليط بين الاثنين استطاع المزج بينهم و لم ينتهي عند حدود الأحداث فقط، بل دخل الى الفلسفة و التخيل لما يممكن عليه العالم مع عدو شديد التعقيد 


الفيلم الذي صدر في 2013 كان من امتع ما شاهدت في هذا العالم من الأفلام (الزومبي)

الرواية اضافت بعدا مدهش و عمقا اكبر بكثير

Natasha Musa

I heard the audio book from Audible. The performance is great though I read somewhere the version with Mark Hamill was better. Anyway the version I listened to was good. The performance was stellar & brought each character alive. Definitely different that the zombie books I've read in the past... Now I can watch the movie.

Adam

Despite it's awful reviews, I enjoyed the movie for WWZ. It's hard to read a review of it without people mentioning how much it butchered the book. For what it was it was great -- but the book is able to explore on a level that would never work for a movie. The book itself takes place after World War Z, the zombie war. The narrator interviews a series of people from around the world as they elaborate on how they participated in the war. These range from the origins of the disease and how it spread, to how countries adapted with it, to submarines, to how humans faced off and eventually cleaned up after the war.

If you've ever wondered "I like zombies, but what would it be like if we did ?", then you'll truly enjoy this book. It's much less about action and more about strategy and motivations to keep on living.

Arron Kau

Good way to kill 6 hours while you're driving from Baltimore to Boise.

Maria Banning

Meh...not what I was expecting but well written. Now I really want to see how they made this book into a movie.

Megan BV

Brilliant book and so interesting to listen to in a mid-pandemic world. 
The audiobook version has an amazing cast. 

Ari Rose

The full cast narration was definitely cool, it's what kept me intrigued despite me losing my interest fairly quickly. After the Warnings section, I was pretty much in and out of paying full attention to the audio. 

Natalie Sypeck 

4.5 stars
I listened to the audiobook

Wow! I saw Jessie from Bowtiesandbooks (youtube) gave this book a good review and I was looking for a new audiobook, so I thought "Why not?" I'm not a huge Zombie fan, my mom doesn't like them so I don't have a lot of experience with them, and I've also never seen the move (hopefully that changes tonight!). 

While the start was a bit slow, once it got going (around 10%ish), it was just nonstop action. I loved the audiobook! It had a full cast, and everyone was perfect for their role. I really loved the military action scenes, I don't think I would have liked them as much if I was reading the physical book, full of terminology I don't know, but when the actors were shouting in my ear about their experience, I was going wild, I was really in the moment. I really enjoyed how we got such a vast view of the Zombie War, from all over the world, from all different points of view: scientists, military people, criminals, civilians. 
Highly recommend you listen to this book. I can see myself reading this a few times throughout my life. 

TW: Death of people and animals, injury, swear words, references to desperate acts of survival 

Shafel McDowall

I'd rate this book 6/5 stars if I could. I highly reccomend this book as an audiobook, I don't think paper would do it justice. 

The full cast was amazing and really kept me engrossed during the entire story. I love how the author paid attention to culture and geography when writing his story, it really helped with the reader experience. The scariest part of this book was how real the "history" felt, I genuinely think we're dumb enough as a species to let something like this happen. I wish I could shake the author's hand and tell him "good job!".

Kelsi Proulx

I hated the format of this one... It was written like a post-war documentary and felt way too close to non-fiction for me. Since each chapter focused on a new character, I had no attachment to anybody. The only consistent character was the reporter and he was pretty minor. It just felt all-around boring. I was ready to put it down after the first few chapters.

Chad Henderson

this book is amazingly well written. I have read non-fiction accounts of actual events that feel less real than this.

Victoria Bartlett

Okay. I liked it at first and found the approach compelling but then my interest waned. All of the battle descriptions and descriptions of the weapons wore on me. With no vested interest in the characters, these tales were boring. Especially since they all had the same tone. I appreciated bringing in the different aspects of a global war and letting us see those insights. I found myself skimming the last 100 pages of the book.

jam 🍯

I shouldn't have been surprised that this book, a mass market zombie novel, was exactly that - a zombie novel designed for mass markets. I should also not have been surprised that this book, written in 2006, feels extremely dated not only in terms of what a zombie should be, but also in terms of how different cultures are perceived and portrayed in the book. Having said that, those things did disappoint me because of the high praise the novel received, and for the high cultural imprint that it has had on American zombie literature. As someone new to zombie lit, I'm glad I read it because it mythologizes the American zombie very well.

That being said, the novel itself was average to me. The narration style of "interviews" was jarring, as it interrupted the flow of the novel while still dragging on too long, especially when broken up loosely into chapters that were supposed to follow the phases of a war that didn't have strict phases. I enjoyed some of the accounts but found that too many of them focused on long passages detailing the fighting, the gear, and the atrocities of a zombie war, rather than the human struggles that I preferred.

Lastly, unrelated to the book itself, but - I think many people will be reading this book in current (COVID-19) times due to that sense of helplessness and loss of control, caused by a wave of infections that is infecting the globe. That is fine (I did as well), but the similarities to this book and our situation end there. While many people get sick, they do not cease being human beings the way a Z might. Hurting, wounded, in need of care, their struggles are not equivalent to fantasy beings that we may discard and designate as enemy. Of course, the average, empathetic reader knows this already, but it bears emphasizing: you will not find the comfort you're looking for by reading this book.

World War Z an oral history of the zombie war

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