World War Z

Paperback, 320 pages

Published Oct. 29, 2006 by Duckworth.

ISBN:
9780715635964

View on OpenLibrary

3 stars (2 reviews)

“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 …

31 editions

One for US military enthusiasts

2 stars

Some time in the 2000s I remember stumbling on a lengthy set of Reddit posts asking "what if a force of modern US Marines found themselves stranded in Ancient Rome?". Much of this book is that, but for the zombie apocalypse. If you enjoyed that Reddit series then you'll probably enjoy this in the same way.

At other points in this fictional "oral history" I found myself thinking fondly of the late Studs Terkel's engrossing (real) oral history book Hard Times. I noticed Studs was thanked in the Afterword (along with George Romero, obvs). Hard Times is a classic because it captures different overlapping experiences of the Great Depression in people's own words, recorded by the author with dignity and respect. I think Max Brooks aimed for a fictional form of this, but missed the heart and soul of it - overlapping accounts of the same experience told by real, …