World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.95 You Save: $7.00 (47%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Book Review: A totally new twist on the genre
Summary: 5 Stars
People who picked up this book based on the tongue-in-cheek humor of Brooks' previous book, The Zombie Survival Guide, will be completely taken aback by this very different, totally engaging volume. Arranged as a series of interviews with survivors, Brooks uses this book to chronicle the outbreak, fighting and resolution of a decade-long war in which humanity fights for survival against a plague of zombies. Part military chronicle, part survival tale and part good old-fashioned horror yarn, this book sucks you right in and entertains at virtually every turn.
I hesitate to refer to this as a "novel," as it doesn't really read like one, with a main storyline or even a single climax. Even though there's a chapter entitled "Turning Point," it's hard to say where, exactly, the story hinges. Really, the book is a series of interconnected short stories, each one with its own element to add to the ongoing chronicle. Most of these are quite engaging -- such as the story of a downed pilot in the Louisiana swamp trying to get to safety amongst swarms of the undead, a computer whiz from Japan so enraptured by his online world that he doesn't notice when his entire country begins evacuating around him, the drug manufacturer whose placebo "vaccine" makes problems even worse, and the various political and military figures whose stories show the good and the bad of the war.
This really is an incredible read, one of the best zombie books I've ever read. It's not an easy genre to translate to the printed page -- it works better in movies -- but this book nails it. It's smart, genuinely frightening and surprisingly realistic. Highly recommended.
Book Review: So bored, I turned into a zombie!!!
Summary: 2 Stars
Before you stop reading this, know that I love all things zombie. Love zombie movies, George Romero, etc.
This is not that much of a zombie movie. It's a book about people living with zombies. And you have to read a lot of personal narrative about people living around zombies. But not a lot about zombies.
Basically, the author must have read Studs Terkels books like "Working" and decided to write a zombie novel in a similar fashion. The author does in fact credit Studs Terkel.
But what is so SORELY missing is suspense and action. This reads like a sociology book, not a fun work of fiction. Heck, I felt like a zombie after staggering to finish this book.
There's a lot of better fiction out there. And there's a lot of better zombie fiction out there too. Sorry Max, I don't like your book that much. The premise is great. You've got Brad Pitt supposedly producing your movie, but your book turned me into a zombie.
And you other reviewers who actually thought there was a political discussion in this book, give me a break... Seriously. It's a zombie novel, not the works of Marx.
Book Review: "Dawn of the Dead" meets "An Inconvenient Truth"
Summary: 4 Stars
Other reviewers are correct that Brooks approaches the problem posed by a zombie issue as a problem to be solved within the structure of modern global politics. In my opinion, the approach of focusing on the response to the zombie plague is more sophisticated and more timely than making an allegory of the zombies themselves.
It was Romero who took the voodoo myth of the reanimated corpse and popularized an idea of the zombie as a vessel for a communicable plague. He identified a fundamental anxiety and created new monster in response to modern anxieties. However, his use of the zombies as a critique of consumer culture isn't as fresh an observation as it might have been in the 70s, which is the most pertinent criticism of the recent "Dawn of the Dead" remake.
To the modern audience, the idea of zombies carries undercurrents of AIDS, biological warfare, and terrorism, and Brooks is one of the first to recognize and tap into that in an intelligent way. He's taken a specialized, genre subject and elevated it here to something that is literary. And while there will certainly be some who will be disappointed not to find the pages filled with endless descriptions of severed limbs and smashed brains, Brooks lays on enough of the biological details to keep the subject from becoming abstract, while keeping his focus aimed on something more significant.
As Brooks envisions it, the zombie plague encompasses the threat of terrorism and global war, natural catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina or the devastating tsunami, and global disease scares like avian flu and SARS.
There are two outcomes of a story about a zombie plague; either it consumes and annihilates humanity, or it is contained by the organized action of something like a government. As a domestic political parable, Brooks doesn't throw any hard punches. He envisions America triumphing over the zombies under a national unity government of both parties, with Colin Powell and Howard Dean as president and vice president respectively.
Powell and Dean are not named but are clearly identified, with Dean providing a narrative, in which he is identified as a "whacko" retired to Burlington, Vermont. He makes allusion to his rising political star and subsequent "meltdown," and mentions the president's military training and Jamaican relatives.
I also think some readers may have misinterpreted the narratives about Israel. As I understood Brooks's narrative, in his "near future" Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from the West Bank behind a security barrier and the Palestinians had declared statehood in the territories. Brooks sees Israel as being the first nation to directly address the zombie outbreak by declaring a national quarantine, effectively made possible by the much-criticized barriers. Certainly Brooks's imagining of these events has a political undercurrent, but I'd see it as a center-right
While early in the book, a showy exertion of American military technology proves useless against the inexorable tide of the undead, but later on, it is the American military that adapts and develops the techniques to defeat the zombies.
Some may find it politically offensive that Brooks approaches the zombies as a problem simultaneously emerging globally, and paints the response to the problem from the perspective of people from various countries. However, the approach to emerging problems like communicable disease, terrorism and climate change as global has been broadly accepted by all but the most polar extremes of the politcal spectrum.
Several of the ideas are legitimately controversial. Brooks envisions Russia organizing as a sort of neo-Tsarist theocracy, and China pushing back the zombie tide only after a civil war which removes its establishment. Nuclear exchange occurs between Iran and Pakistan, emerging from a dispute over refugees from the plague, and Brooks explains this from the perspective of an Iranian diplomat who wryly suggests that traditional enemies have the diplomatic mechanisms necessary to prevent nuclear war, while traditional allies would not be able to communicate in a dispute growing from a crisis.
The policy, implemented globally, which saves humanity is also disturbing, and Brooks treats it as such. Formulated by a calculating, almost sociopathic former policy-maker from apartheid South Africa, the plan calls for the abandonment of large swaths of the uninfected population to serve as bait to distract the zombies, while the military establishment and necessary personnel retreated to and secured defensible "safe zones."
Perhaps Brooks's most radical position is the notion that the trappings of modern society must be abandoned in this kind of crisis. Professionals from the modern American service economy are re-trained by their former plumbers and housekeepers to perform the kind of tasks necessary in the wake of the zombie induced economic crash.
The military abandons its high-tech weaponry and communications mechanisms in favor of single-shot rifles, revolutionary-era firing formations, highly trained dogs, and multipurpose shovels called Lobotomizers that can be used like axes to decapitate zombies. In Europe, refugees ride out the zombie plague by holing up in old castles and fighting off the undead with medieval weapons pilfered from museums. A brilliant Indian general fights off the zombies by positioning his soldiers in a square formation reminiscent of the ancient Greek phalanx.
Ultimately, Brooks, whose previous book explored a similar theme and managed to achieve humor by taking the hypothetical problem extremely seriously, invites audiences to really treat the idea of zombies seriously by approaching them realistically, both as a military problem and a political crisis.
Book Review: Quite a compelling read
Summary: 5 Stars
Despite its absurd premise, World War Z is one of the most compelling novels I've read in a long time. As other reviewers have already written, the book (inspired by Stud's Terkel's The Good War) is constructed as to present the seemingly true accounts of the survivors of a fictional zombie war that nearly destroyed humanity. These first person narratives tell the tale of the war from its origins in Asia where the zombies were first encountered to the aftermath and clean-up across the globe. Brooks offers accounts from survivors from many classes and cultures in order to present a broad spectrum of the "war". Each story is poignant in its own way, and truly gripping.
One of the entertaining conceits of the work is that Brooks references events in our current time, but it is impossible to tell when exactly they occur within the timeframe of the novel. We know that World War Z takes place in the "near future", but just when exactly that is is up for debate. It was fun to try to identify the politicians and celebrities the author alluded to in the many vignettes. However, due to the lack of absolute details and elision of all names, one cannot make a positive ID on anyone. Still, it was fun imagining just who he was talking about!
To comment on some of the poor reviews for the book: While I believe Brooks does in fact have liberal leanings, I don't believe he infused World War Z with far left political views. I would urge anyone who thinks he's bashing a specific political group (read: GOP) to go back and re-read the portions that ostensibly do that. I challenge anyone to truly pin down which party he is blaming. As I already mentioned, the allusions to politicians/administrations are intentionally vague. The narratives can certainly be read to lambast either party, and that's at least, how I chose to interpret them. So for anyone with a political chip on their shoulder, brush it off before reading the book.
Just one more comment on the whole zombie genre: While reading the book, it struck me that, like the time travel genre, the zombie genre has it's own internal logic. Specifically, no one ever knows initially how to "kill" a zombie. I got a chuckle out of this. All zombie worlds must never have had a George Romero or Dario Argento, otherwise they'd know as soon as the first member of the walking dead showed up. Aim for the head. :)
Book Review: Help!
Summary: 5 Stars
I like the end of the world scenario. I kept thinking throughout the book
Thank God the Democrats were not leading the country. It is easy to transpose other possible scenarios with this one. It doubles the pleasure.