Name: World War Z
Rating: 3.878712871287129 (404 reviews)
ISBN: 9780786293483

Max Brooks

An Oral History of the Zombie War

World War Z

High Fidelity

“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.”

“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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

an oral history of the zombie war

Ans Rizwan

"The monsters that rose from the dead, they are nothing compared to ones we carry in our hearts." the movie was an insult to this. I loved this shit man

Greg Talbot

A tapestry of war narratives ties depicts the zombie maelstrom that strikes that world and threathens global peace and progress. Oh yes, these are the same zombies of Romero and “White Zombie” fame. And while Brooks does not steer us from the conventional characterizations of the zombie, and he gives a fairly expected falling dominos of terror, he succeeds in presenting a series of tortuous vinettes that are moving and exciting. Take for instance the story of the Chinese submarine, lurking in the deep to waitout the zombie advancement and country’s civil war. It is a fantastic story that gives suspense, hope, and a different perspective from your typical bunkered story. Also the story moves from country to country, making it not only vast, but rousing. Can I tell you I thought I’d be going into this one with some laughs – I mean his father is..-- well, this is so far from it friends. It’s a dogged nightmare of reanimation and grotesque that will give you heightened tension and somnambulism.

Tim Pendry

Wow! But only a very good book rather than a great book. It is to Romero's films what Hammer is to Stoker and Shelley. No zombie movie is going to be seen in quite the same way after this. They are all going to be mentally set in its milieu. But far too many times Brooks falls into the trap of telling a story that comes straight out of movie cliche - whether it be Capra or the latest action flick. There are moments when he can really get to you emotionally and others when you sense this is a man who may understand how international relations really works - but then he lets you down by lacking the courage of his convictions. He baulks at telling a story that might be truer to human nature and less likely to please the American public. But this is carping. No one with even the slightest interest in horror and myths of the undead should admit to not having read this.

Interesting plot and perspectives just really heavy on military vernacular kinda went on sometimes 

Kate Hornberger 

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Megan BV

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

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 

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.

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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