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« Tenderness, by Robert Cormier
The Perfectionist: Life & Death in Haute Cuisine, by Rudolph Chelminski »

World War Z, by Max Brooks

August 27, 2007 by Charlotte

A good book really can change the way you look at the world. Before I read World War Z, for instance, I never sat on a beach and wondered: how would I defend myself, right now, if zombies came staggering out of the surf?

Thanks a lot, Max.

Subtitled “An Oral History of the Zombie War,” this macabre exercise in hypothetical apocalypse is the most realistic exploration of zombie warfare you are ever likely to read. Presented as the work of a U.N. postwar commission, it’s a collection of interviews with the politicians, doctors, and front-line soldiers who lived through humanity’s ten-year war against the living dead. The big picture—the near annihilation of the human race—takes shape through individual stories from all over the globe, from the doctor who was there when the first case of zombie plague appeared in China to the last poor guy on the International Space Station, tapping into satellite feeds to watch the evacuation of Japan. The Q&A format and short interviews make it a fast-paced read.

Brooks has devoted more thought to the logistics of zombie warfare and to anti-zombie weaponry than is probably quite sane. World War Z is a technothriller, really, the text laced with acronyms and explanations of why conventional military tactics don’t work against undead opponents. And while I’m tagging it as horror, it’s the kind of horror you find on the front pages of newspapers. The scariest thing about this book isn’t the monsters, it’s the breakdown of civilization as we knew it, and the way the survivors’ stories contain echoes of Jonestown, Chernobyl, Dunkirk.

But it’s also zombies. Read it for the social satire or the deadpan jokes. Read it if you enjoy a good, old-fashioned end-of-the-world story. Or, you know, you just enjoy zombies.

Check the WRL catalog.

WRL owns the Zombie Survival Guide, too. Just in case.

wwz.jpg

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Posted in Books, Charlotte's Picks, Dark humor, Horror, Readers' advisory, Science fiction | 9 Comments

9 Responses

  1. on August 28, 2007 at 3:30 pm Jessica

    Dammit, Charlotte. I really don’t have time to read these. I forbid you to recommend anything else this week that has any appeal for me personally.

    I mean it.


  2. on August 28, 2007 at 3:42 pm Charlotte

    Tune in tomorrow, on Blogging for a Good Book, as Charlotte reviews Chilton’s car repair manuals…


  3. on August 28, 2007 at 4:24 pm Tripp

    This truly is one of the most well constructed and entertaining books I’ve read in quite some time.


  4. on August 29, 2007 at 1:14 pm Eli

    This sounds ridiculous, but I stayed up all night picturing zombies taking over my neighborhood, planning to buy lots canned food and wondering if the guy down the street would loan me one of his guns! Here is a link the a review of this book on another library’s blog
    http://www.tclib.org/blog/?p=52


  5. on September 15, 2007 at 1:42 pm Jessica

    Mwaaahhhhhhahahahahahaha!!!!!!1!1

    Just finished it. Fan-freakin’-TASTIC! Satire! Zombies! Satire! Zombies!


  6. on November 8, 2007 at 7:25 pm JaeInSa

    I loved World War Z. I own both WWZ and the ZSG (which I got for Christmas one year from a male librarian who knows I have a “thing” for zombies.) Am now reading the Monster trilogy by Wellington (zombies) and already read his 13 Bullets (vampires) too.


  7. on April 29, 2011 at 12:08 am Shaun of the Dead « Blogging for a Good Book

    […] so zombies are big these days. Huge, in fact. Fictional and historical characters have taken up the eternal […]


  8. on November 30, 2011 at 9:56 am Zone One, by Colson Whitehead « Blogging for a Good Book

    […] kicks the crap back into the street?  The best I can tell from my own reading is that would leave three writers whose insight goes deeper than the mechanics of killing the undead.  The third, of course, […]


  9. on February 12, 2013 at 12:14 am Justin

    I like it a lot



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