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Loading... World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Warby Max Brooks
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Ever since I can remember I've been fascinated by Zombies. World War Z adds a new chapter to my fascination. Max Brooks writes brilliantly. The Zombie war happened and here is told the aftermath. Very realistic. Documentary style. What would happen and how would different cultures and different social classes react to the Zombie invasion. Loved it! ( )I just couldn't get into it; I quit halfway through and it was a bit of a struggle to get that far. I don't blame the author -- it is interesting and well-written, and I felt like I SHOULD like it, but it just didn't work for me. "It's not you, it's me." Although WORLD WAR Z is, without a doubt, fiction, it's also so much more than that. You can call it a satire; what you can't call it is a totally made up story that could never happen in the real world. Told in an interview style, WORLD WAR Z is the story of the Zombie War that nearly decimated Earth. From the Great Panic to VA Day, every possible voice is heard from--politicians, soldiers, divers, dissidents, deserters, and the everyday, average Joe who found himself fighting for his life and way of existence in the face of the undead. Max Brooks has a very unique writing style, a very loud "voice" that draws you into his story from page one and never lets go. Although there's never been an actual war against an insurgent tide of undead, there have been plenty of wars and squirmishes throughout history that the author had to draw from. From the Vietnam and Korean wars, from World War I & II and the fight against Hitler, from Desert Storm to the current fight against terrorism in Iraq, Mr. Brooks has managed to pull the best--and worst--from everyone involved and use it in his fictional account. There's no doubt that WORLD WAR Z is an amazing, addictive, wonderful read. It's also emotional, disturbing, and thought-provoking. Although I may not worry, per se, about an upcoming fight against zombies, I do worry about the world that my children, and future grandchildren, will be left to inhabit after I'm gone. In that respect, this story is frightening. It's scary to think that the world, whether it be the mighty democracy of the United States or the iron fist of Russia or China, would not be prepared to defend themselves against a global attack from something outside of their human enemies. Kudos to Mr. Brooks for such a great read. Fiction or satire, pure speculation or hard fact, WORLD WAR Z is one book you don't want to miss. I think the greatest thing about this book is that it doesn't read like a zombie book. One could easily substitute zombism for any disease. Brooks has obviously taken the time to think about how a disease like zombism would spread, how governments would react, how the public would react. When reading this book, you start to believe that this could happen, that at any moment a special broadcast will appear on the television saying that zombies are coming. But the most wonderful thing is, after reading this book you feel like you are just a little more prepared for the impending disaster. I would recommend this book to anyone, no matter their usual tastes, as this book has something for everyone. I’m not normally attracted to zombie stuff. Movies about the living dead? No, thanks. Zombie pub crawls? Nah, I’ll pass. But I’d be lying if I said World War Z hadn’t caught my eye more than a few times when I was browsing the shelves at bookstores. So I finally checked it out from my local library and it turned out to be a rather pleasurable read. Not many authors can put together a cohesive story through a series of vignettes from different characters’ perspectives, but I think Max Brooks does this effectively. The characters have unique enough voices in their interviews conducted by the narrator, but sometimes they begin to feel like just more of the same. Some of the interviews were especially chilling, like the narrator’s interview with Sharon, a “feral child,” and Jesika Hendricks’ retelling of how her family and others resorted to cannibalism to survive the winter at a refugee settlement in Canada. When reading, I often found myself grimacing, laughing or staring at the pages in awe of some of the interviewee accounts of what happened during the Zombie War. I probably said “Ugh, gross!” or “Retreat! Retreat!” aloud too many times to count. One touch that I thought was really cool was how Brooks injected tidbits of pop culture into the narrative. In T. Sean Collins’ interview this was the most prominent, with obvious references to two popular political commentators from opposite sides of the spectrum getting it on while hell breaks loose around them and, let’s just say, Tinkerbell. I thought this brought a realistic touch to World War Z as it made it well known that not even super-wealthy socialites could escape from the affects of the world being overrun by the living dead. Overall, World War Z was a good, enjoyable read. Quick, too. Only took me about three days to finish, but that may be because it sucked me in from the first page. I’m now listening to the audio book, which is just as good as the novel and the voice actors are spot on. This definitely won’t be the last book by Brooks I pick up. I’ve already requested The Zombie Survival Guide from the library. no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0307346609, Hardcover)“The end was near.” —Voices from the Zombie WarThe 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 (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:11 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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