I've been enjoying Max Brooks' Zombie book -- The Zombie
Survival Guide for quite some time. It's one of those
books that resides on a coffee table and is fun to read at a
single pass or in random pieces. The zombie-verse created
in the "Zombie Survival Guide" was consistent with my
expectations, which rely heavily on the George Romero
vision. When the latest zombie book from Mr. Brooks came
out, I was looking forward to it, but not sure what to
expect. After reading WORLD WAR Z I'm now of the opinion
that we have in our hands the masterwork of the slow-zombie
literary world. Simply put - this is the book by which all
other pieces of zombie fiction will forthwith be judged.
Before reading a new book, I generally will flip though the
pages to see what structure it contains. Short chapters?
Long Chapters? No Chapters? I was a little worried when it
appeared that WORLD WAR Z was divided into many short story
lines contained in larger chapters. My concern was ill
placed, however, and I was soon completely absorbed. This
is a well crafted series of stories that form big picture
mosaic of a global conflict. As a child of the Vietnam era
and it's aftermath I can't help but make comparisons to
McNamara's the "Fog of War" or the 10,000 Day War video
series. The only difference here is that the "good guys"
eventually prevail. Some of the individual stories could
also be ripped from current world experience -- just replace
zombie with terrorist and it reads like an in-depth report
from the BBC or PBS.
This book will shock, entertain and amuse. It certainly is
more than a book about a fictional zombie war - It's a
fascinating look into the dark souls that lie buried within
us all that are usually only exposed when our backs are
against the wall. It's a tribute to the better part of our
nature that surfaces when everything is on the line. It's
also a look back to when the good guys and bad guys were
clearly identifiable and the only option was victory. This
is a excellent book which I recommend highly.
“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
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