3.5 Stars

Book 19 in my Zombie-a-thon!

CW: described suicides of people who do not want to turn into zombies after being infected, gore, loss of loved ones, death

Well that was a mixed bag but overall a very engaging book. Some of the people interviewed told brilliantly frightening stories of zombie hordes sweeping through their towns. On the other hand, the interviews with authority figures whilst necessary for context, were dull as dishwater. I listened to this as an audiobook so appreciated the use of voice actors to reflect the international nature of the apocalypse. Very entertaining!

It took me ten years to finally read this one.

More than a decade ago, I got a copy as a present that was later lost before I could even start reading it, and with an ever growing TBR my initial enthusiasm soon became a nagging voice: you should read it, everyone seems to think it's good.

Well, yes, I did read it even if it took long, and I read it after a pandemic, which made some of the references and stories within feel all that more chilling... nonetheless, it'll take me a bit longer to post a proper review. For now, know that I think it's a great take on the zombie trope, one that feels really too close for comfort.

I haven't seen every zombie movie or read every zombie book in existence, but I have watched enough to know the cliches of the genre. It was so refreshing to read a book that avoided so many of these conventions and covered some new ground. I mean, how many zombie stories span the entire world? How many cover the entire apocalypse, from Patient Zero to the aftermath/rebuilding? Aren't we all a little tired of zombie stories that closely follow a small group of survivors, as they get picked off one by one?

Each chapter is only a few pages long, and consists of an interview of one individual survivor. These survivors range from the powerful elites who made decisions affecting millions, to the most inconsequential peons swept up in the winds of war, to the soldiers on the front line. Each interview is unique in a number of ways; the individual's personality and experiences, their nationality, their role in the events. The nationality of each character in particular is what makes this book so interesting. Whereas most zombie movies I've seen take place in the US (and often end with the heroes fleeing to Canada for some reason), virtually every corner of the world is represented in World War Z. Every nation deals with the crisis in it's own way; the Canadians flee to the arctic, the Americans try to fight the zombies as they would a conventional war, the French use the opportunity to rebuild their national pride, the South Africans rely on a war measures plan developed during Apartheid, the Russians keep control of their military through decimation. Part way through the book, I realized that what I was reading was sociology disguised as science-fiction/horror. Some might argue that the sociology is somewhat sophomoric and predictable, and they would have a point. But remember, this is not written as a history, it's written as an oral history. Each interview is just one man or one woman, and that's what the book is really about. The big picture stuff is interesting and compelling, but this is about individuals surviving, each in their own way. As the author asks in the introduction: “isn't the human factor what connects us so deeply to our past”?

Which brings to mind another interesting aspect of World War Z. In the first pages of the book the journalist conducting the interviews explains the rationale for compiling an oral history, and states his intention to avoid any interpretations or intrusions into people's stories. We hear his questions in many of the interviews, and occasionally an interviewee with react to his body language but otherwise he is virtually silent. It made me wonder about his story. We know that he is American, and that he was commissioned to write a report for the UN. Given what we learn throughout the book, we can probably assume that he spent the war in the “safe zone” in California, but there is no direct evidence. This is not a criticism of the book; on the contrary it's a compliment to the fact that the author does such a good job removing the journalist from the interviews. It left me wanting more.

As a clinical psychologist, it was enjoyable to see the author imagined the psychological trauma that would result from something unimaginable. Of course, there was reference to standard, expected illnesses like PTSD and depression. But we also encounter some creative and reasonably plausible conditions such as the quislings, feral children, and Asymptomatic Demise Syndrome. The human psyche is capable of incredible things in response to trauma and stress, and it says a lot about this book that the author made a point to reach beyond the kinds of reactions that people have in the real world and try to picture what would happen in this reality that he created. At the same time, given the fact that we are reading the stories of survivors, we are almost by definition hearing the tales of the most resilient ones. As you read World War Z, you can't help but wonder what you would do in this situation. How would you react waking up in a world that makes no sense? I think most people would like to imagine that they would be strong, moral, and resilient, and would always be ready and willing to do the right thing. But most people also believe that they wouldn't violate their morality in response to demands of an authority, and research has shown otherwise. If WWII led to the Milgram obedience studies, what kind of psychological research would emerge in the aftermath of World War Z?

3.5 stars.
Glad I found it at a second hand store and reread it, had forgotten most of it. An interesting and intruiging way of telling a zombie story.

I liked this book way more than I expected to. This book is the story of a zombie infestation told from many people perspective of the crisis. I thought this book had a lot of important messages about everything from immigration to community. I haven't read a ton of zombie like stories so I wasn't completely sure about what to expect. I listened to the audiobook for this one which is something I don't do very often (thought I'm starting to try to borrow more from my library) but I think that it was the right decision for this book, especially as it is titled as a oral history. The copy I listened to had a full cast and I thought all the narrators were very good in their roles(it even had Mark Hamill). I know some people really don't like audiobooks, but I would say if your thinking about reading this book to try the audiobook if you can get your hands on it. I also know some people don't like changing perspectives in books, but I've never had a problem with it and I thought it worked really well in this book. I really liked seeing how different survivors from different places dealt with the outbreak. I found myself being really interested in the stories of all the different people. During my listening of this I didn't really think of it as a zombie book because it is really character based. It was really more about many different peoples different approaches to surviving a crisis so if you want a more horror like, gory, zombie story this may not be the book you are looking for. Overall I really enjoyed this story, way more than I thought I would, I really liked the audiobook, and I would encourage people thinking about reading this book to definitely pick it up, whether as an audiobook or a print one.

*Updated after rereading. 10/12/20*

This still holds up remarkably well even if I'm not the zombie enthusiast I used to be. I did the Audible version this time and the all-star cast does a fantastic job. The weird thing is that the jumping off point for the American political aspect had that 2006 W. Bush era mindset which seemed kind of dark and cynical at the time, but now seems incredibly naïve and quaint these days. The stuff about how various governments around the world either react swiftly or fail completely in a time of crisis really hits home these days.

*Original review.*
While his previous book was a tongue-in-cheek zombie survival guide, Brooks turns deadly serious here. Written as a series of survivors' stories in a UN report following a world wide war with the undead, Brooks crafted a classic horror novel that reads like history. Inventive, scary and a must read for anyone who ever enjoyed a George Romero zombie movie.

6.0 Stars. One of my All Time Favorites. This book took the well-worn concept of "the world is being taken over my zombies" and turned it into a global, thriller that looked at both the beginning, middle and end (?) of the struggle from a series of different viewpoints that explore the social, political, environmental and financial effects of such events. Superbly done and I can not conceive of a better standard for the genre. Oh yeah, and it is a real page turner and is NEVER boring.

(My full review of this book is longer than Goodreads' word-count limitations; find the entire essay at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

Anytime I hear of some funny, gimmicky book suddenly becoming popular among the hipster set, I always squint my eyes and brace myself for the worst; because usually when it comes to such books, the worst is all you can expect to find, an endless series of fluffy pop-culture pieces designed specifically for crafty point-of-purchase display at your favorite corporate superstore, and then a year later to be forgotten by society altogether. And so it's been in the last six months as I've heard more and more about this book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which supposedly is a hilarious "actual" oral history about an apocalyptic war with the undead that supposedly almost wiped out the human race as we know it; even worse, that it had been inspired by an actual gimmicky point-of-purchase humor book, the dreadful Zombie Survival Guide from a few years ago which had been published specifically and only to make a quick buck off the "overly specific survival guide" craze of the early 2000s. And even worse than all this, the author of both is Max Brooks, as in the son of comedy legend Mel Brooks; and if the son of a comedy legend is trawling the literary gutters of gimmicky point-of-purchase humor books, the chances usually are likely that they have nothing of particular interest to say.

So what a surprise, then, to read the book myself this month, and realize that it's not a gimmicky throwaway humor book at all, but rather a serious and astute look at the next 50 years of global politics, using a zombie outbreak as a metaphorical stand-in for any of the pervasive challenges facing us as an international culture these days (terrorism, global warming, disease, natural disasters), showing with the precision of a policy analyst just how profoundly the old way of doing things is set to fail in the near future when some of these challenges finally become crises. It is in fact an astoundingly intelligent book, as "real" as any essay by Seth Godin or Malcolm Gladwell, basically imagining the debacle of New Orleans multiplied by a million, then imagining what would happen if the Bushists were to react to such a thing in the same way; and even more astounding, Brooks posits that maybe the real key to these future challenges lies with the citizens of third-world countries, in that they are open to greater and faster adaptability than any fat, lazy, middle-class American or European ever could be. Oh yeah, and it's got face-eating zombies too. Did I mention the face-eating zombies?

Because that's the thing to always remember, that this comes from an author who has spent nearly his entire life in the world of comedy and gimmicky projects, not only from family connections but also his own job as a staff writer at Saturday Night Live from 2001 to '03; that no matter how smart World War Z gets (and it gets awfully smart at points), it is still ultimately a fake oral history of an apocalyptic zombie war that supposedly takes place just five or ten years from now, starting as these messes often do as a series of isolated outbreaks in remote third-world villages. And in fact this is where Brooks first starts getting his political digs in, right from the first page of the manuscript itself, by using the initial spread of the zombie virus to comment on the way such past epidemics like HIV have been dealt with by the corrupt old white males who used to be in charge of things; basically, by ignoring the issue as long as it wasn't affecting fellow white males, then only paying attention after it's become an unstoppable epidemic. In Brooks' world, just like the real one of pre-9/11 intelligence-gathering, we see that a few government smarties from around the world really were able to catch the implications of this mysterious new virus while it was still theoretically controllable; just that their memos and papers went ignored for political reasons by those actually in charge, as well as getting lost in the vast bureaucratic shuffle that the Cold War has created in the Western military-industrial complex.

That's probably the most pleasurable part of the first half, to tell you the truth, and by "pleasurable" I mean "witty and humorous in a bleak, horrifying, schauenfreude kind of way" -- of watching the virus become more and more of a threat, of watching entire cities start to go under because of the zombie epidemic, then watching Brooks paint an extremely thinly-veiled portrait of how the Bush administration would deal with such a situation, and by extension any government ruled by a small cabal of backwards, power-hungry religious fundamentalists. And in this, then, World War Z suddenly shifts from a critique about AIDS to a critique about Iraq, showing how in both situations (the Middle East and zombies, that is) the real priority of the people currently in charge is to justify all the trillions of dollars spent at traditional weapon manufacturing companies under the old Cold-War system (companies, by the way, where all the people in charge have lucrative executive jobs when they're not being the people in charge), leading to such ridiculous situations as a full-on tank and aircraft charge mostly for the benefit of the lapdog press outlets who are there covering the "first grand assault." In Iraq, unfortunately, we found that a billion dollars in tanks still can't stop a teenage girl with a bomb strapped to her chest; and metaphorically that might be the most chilling scene in the entirety of World War Z as well, the press-friendly "zombie response" set up by the Bush-led government in New York's Yonkers neighborhood, done not for good strategic reasons but rather to show off the billions of dollars in weapons the government had recently acquired, leading to a virtual slaughter of all the soldiers and journalists there by the chaotic zombie hoard that eventually arrives.

This, then, gets us into the first futuristic posit of Brooks in the novel to not have actually happened in real life yet -- the "Great Panic," that is, when the vast majority of humans suddenly lose faith in whatever government was formerly running their section of the world, and where mass anarchy and chaos leads to the accidental and human-on-human deaths of several hundreds of millions of more people. And again, by detailing a fictional tragedy like a global zombie epidemic, and the complete failure of a Bush-type administration to adequately respond to it, Brooks is eerily predicting here such real situations like last week's complete meltdown of Bear Stearns (the fifth largest investment bank in the entire United States), leading many to start wondering for the first time what exactly would happen if the US dollar itself was to experience the same kind of whirlwind collapse, a collapse that happens so fast (in a single business day in the case of Bear Stearns) that no one in the endless red tape of the government itself has time to actually respond to it?

Brooks' answer here is roughly the same one Cormac McCarthy proposed in last year's Pulitzer-winning The Road; chaos, bloodshed, violence, inhumanity, an everyone-for-themselves mentality from the very people we trusted to lead us in such times of crisis. Make no mistake, this is a damning and devastating critique of the corrupt conservatives currently in charge of things; a book that uses the detritus of popular culture to masquerade as a funny and gross book about zombies, but like the best fantastical literature in history is in fact a prescient look at our current society. It's unbelievable, in fact, how entertaining and engrossing this novel is throughout its middle, given how this is usually the part of any book that is the slowest and least interesting; here Brooks uses the naturally slow middle of his own story to make the majority of his political points, and to get into a really wonky side of global politics that is sure to satisfy all you hardcore policy junkies (as well as military fetishists).

Because that's the final thing important to understand about World War Z, is that it's a novel with a truly global scope; Brooks here takes on not only what such a zombie epidemic would do to our familiar US of A, but also how such an epidemic would spread in the village-centric rural areas of southeast Asia, the infrastructure-poor wastelands of Russia and more, and especially how each society fights the epidemic in slightly different ways, some with more success than others. For example, Brooks posits that in such places as India, population density is just too high to do much of any good; in his fictional world history, such countries are basically decimated by such a catastrophe, with there basically being few humans even left in India by the time everything is over. Other countries, though, used to picking up as a nation and fleeing for other lands, survive the zombie outbreaks quite well; those who are already used to being refugees, for example, see not too much of a difference in their usual lifestyle from this latest turn in events, ironically making them the societies most suited for survival in such a world. (This is opposed to all the clueless middle-class Americans in the novel, for example, who in a panic make for the wilds of northern Canada, in the blind hope that the winter weather will freeze the zombies into non-action; although that turns out to be true, poor planning unfortunately results in the deaths of tens of millions of people anyway, from hypothermia and starvation and plain ol' mass-murder.)

And this is ultimately what I mean by this book being such a politically astute one; because as...

Thoughtful and thought-provoking. Not at all the typical zombie book, and not at all what I expected. Published in 2006, the issues and underlying plot points are as pertinent today as then. What would happen in a real zombie apocalypse? Given current politics, economics, cultural trends, and geography, I'd be willing to bet it happens closely to Brooks' vision.

World War Z is structured along the lines of a documentary, a collection of remembrances about the world-wide zombie war. Divided by chronological order, one can get the feel of the evolution from chapter headings: "Warnings," "Blame," "The Great Panic," "Turning the Tide" "Home Front USA," "Around the World and Above," "Total War," and "Good-byes."

"Warnings" begins with a doctor in China responding to a remote village to a request for help. His tale lures the reader in, giving an intimate view of the initial confusion, the fear, the drastic response by the state, and the systemic holes that lead to ultimate break down. From there, the interviewer talks to a human smuggler in Tibet, drug war agents in Greece, a black-market surgeon in Brazil, a laborer from South Africa, a member of Israeli intelligence, and a repatrioted Palestinian. It's a brilliant idea for a narrative about a global issue, because each culture group frames the problem in terms of its own narrow focus (how could it not?), giving the reader insight into how confronting any issue takes place in a morass of history--but also how similar we are at the individual level. And, unfortunately, the degree to which personal selfishness, both altruistic (saving loved ones) and greedy, pave the way for worsening disaster.

Further interviews include the ordinary survivor (who was anything but), soldiers, an astronaut, and various government officials including the vice-president and a diplomat. It makes for an extremely interesting analysis, because it covers both the personal, private story and the larger, world arc.

Ultimately, it was a sobering and satisfying commentary on humanity and the current state of the world. While that sounds potentially dull and analytical, structuring the story around a zombie war is frosting on the vegan cupcake. While it possibly could have been as strong of a narrative if Brooks was imagining a virulent and lethal virus, zombies gave it a flash factor that draws dystopia fans in. Besides, reanimated dead do create challenges of their own that would be unique in warfare. One general talks about how traditional warfare centers around people that are "bred, led and fed." Zombies require none of those things--their ranks grow with death, they require no leaders, so it is not possible to remove key strategists in a campaign, and they don't require any sort of supplies or rest, so there is no possibility of destroying a supply line. Underwater environments prove to be the long-term zombie reservoir, presenting unique challenges to world-wide eradication.

Minor quibbles include a lack of some of the science behind the outbreak, as well as that of the lone survivors. And, while it is a thought-provoking story over all, it's not exactly a gripping one that kept me up at night. That's actually okay, as it proved more satisfying in the long run. Just temper your expectations.

In some ways, this was the complete antithesis of Zone One, (review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) which examines the zombie post-apocalypse through the individual and humanity's slide downward. This looks at zombie wars through multiple viewpoints on a world-wide scale, and it's ultimate message is hope with cost.

I highly recommend to zombie or science-dabbling fans. Four flesh-eaten stars.

http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2013/0...

2017 Popsugar reading challenge #15 A book with a subtitle

Hay una cosa que tienen las historias de zombies que me gusta más que los zombies en sí: los humanos. Me gustan las historias de zombies que hablan del hombre y sus métodos, sus miedos y sus dudas. De su evolución y de sus acciones a veces retrógradas. Me gusta cuando nos delatan y nos hacen ver que la mayoría sería completamente incapaz de sobrevivir a un desastre de esa naturaleza. También nos muestra lo fácil que es decir lo que haría uno en caso de que pasara esta cosa o aquella, pero lo complicado que es llevarlo a cabo con el tsunami de emociones inundándote la razón por completo.
Este es un libro con muchísimos puntos de vista. Los hay muy humanos y los hay que se obligaron a serlo menos. Los hay humildes y los hay soberbios, como siempre será. Han contado sus historias después de la Guerra Zombie y cómo han sobrevivido a ella, las cosas que tuvieron que cambiar y lo que perdieron, y lo que le ha dado puntos a estas narraciones son los términos y relatos vívidos que le sumaron veracidad y me llevaron a un mundo en caos visto desde diferentes lugares del mapa, aunque quedé con ganas de leer sobre algunos países en particular. Las ventajas y desventajas de algunos continentes, los mitos siendo desmentidos... Fue bastante realista, y aunque en ocasiones me pareció que se parecían mucho los narradores en su forma de hablar, sus personalidades, experiencias, sentimientos y secretos eran completamente distintos.
Estuvo muy bien cómo el autor se dedicó a explicar cada una de las cosas que respaldaban, por ejemplo, operaciones oficiales, y cómo ahondó en los detalles y cualidades que caracterizaban cada región en específico, eso le dio un carácter de realismo bien trabajado. Los métodos en que se manejó el desastre, el acmé de la pandemia y su posterior declive. En el fulgor del virus, nos mostró desde hechos muy distantes y variados los cambios que este producía en las personas. Nos brindó una perspectiva lo suficientemente amplia como para imaginarlos el resto, ausente aquí, porque, por supuesto, en una historia de estas no podían faltar los misterios, las preguntas sin respuestas, aquello que los personajes se negaron a decir.

A perfect vivisection

Of the social, economic, environmental, and political consequences of zombie outbreaks
One day, it might be a helpful or even lifesaving work one hopefully has as a paperback and not on an ebook reader. The seriousness and attention to detail Brooks put in his work are part of the satire, because it really feels as if a real reporter is investigating a story.

Each one reacts differently
As in the ironic Zombie survival guide, Brooks uses all possible aspects of a zombie apocalypse, from its beginning until how it could end, including each human's individual reaction to it to describe the happenings.

Less action, more characters
Switching between the interviews, the book gives a new and more personal view on this very prominent topic, avoiding stereotypes and overused tropes, and is instead telling it from the points of view of very different people that wouldn´t normally be used to write the standard book or movie script.

Could be used in other genres too
The idea of using interviews as the main element for telling a story is a rare style element, but full of potential for more frequent use in fiction, although it might get very tricky to integrate it in a way that doesn´t interrupt the flow. But a Fantasy or Sci-Fi novel told from those perspectives would be a nice variation of the scheme.

Not as superficial as the Zombie survival guide
While the zombie survival guide was more a pure fun read, Brooks pimps his writing this time with innuendos, criticism, and social commentary.

It´s maybe also a satire of journalism itself
But I haven´t enough expertise to be competent in that. So maybe Brooks even imitated and satirized the tone of autobiographical monologues and endless introspections that are often unintentional satires already, when reporters are losing rhetorical control.

Tropes show how literature is conceived and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

This book is like ordering ice-cream and receiving a punch in the mouth.

I've been wanting to read this book for a while, since it seemed right up my alley; I love a good apocafic, and zombies are always fun. I made it to page 69 before putting it down with great force--I would have thrown it, except it was a library book.

This book is, as advertised, about the global zombie apocalypse as told by the survivors. You don't stay with a narrative voice very long; each one speaks to the 'interviewer', telling their experience of the global plague, and then moves on. It's not worth becoming fond of any of them, and frankly, not very likely either; personalities only go about as far as classing a person as “stupid,” "naive", or “evil,” with the occasional “if only we'd listened to that farsighted man!”

The personality that comes through the strongest is the writer, not the in-story journalist who has supposedly compiled the stories, but in fact max brooks. I don't know the man, but from the 69 pages of his writing I already dislike him.

The overall tone I get from this book is 'smug.' I twitched in the introduction when the journalist describes his motivation writing the book; his boss who pays him rejects his first draft which contains the interviews which contain the “human factor”, dismissing them as “too intimate … too many feelings.” Obviously, this boss is a robot-hearted beaurocrat!

Or maybe the journalist is an idiot. He was told to write up a report containing “cold, hard data,” and “clear facts and figures,” and he handed in an oral history? What did he think was going to happen?

I could handle it if the framing device was “idiot-journalist is idiot,” but it's not just him. It quickly becomes apparent that the actual subtitle of this book is “How the people and institutions I despise will doom us all in the upcoming zombie apocalypse.” Nearly every account falls into “Oh, I was so foolish and innocent then!” or “I remain a selfish bastard, and refuse to feel guilty for my actions.” It's like a whole book of stories ending with “And then the entire bus gave me a standing ovation, and the bus driver told me I was his adopted brother.”

AUGH. Look, 69 pages produced that much aggravation. Imagine if I'd finished it.