World War Z

I think I'm probably a bit behind the times in reading this book, but let's not hold that against me too much. As silly as it seems to say that a fake history book about a fake zombie war is one of the best books I have ever read, I'm gonna go ahead and say it: World War Z is one of the best books I have ever read.

When I was strolling through Barnes and Noble and saw the book lying on one of those tables heaped with paperbacks, I almost laughed. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War? It seemed like a B movie in book form. Of course, I bought it. Figured I'd give it a read over Christmas and zone out in a sea of lumbering undead. What I got instead was an insightful, incredibly well written commentary on global politics, mass hysteria, and what would happen if a pandemic threatened existence as we know it. Oh, and a bunch of zombies too.

The book is presented as a series of interviews with survivors of the fight against "Zack", one of the pseudonyms used to describe the legions of undead, with author Max Brooks serving as the interviewer. I found this to be a particularly interesting narrative choice, because the book is written as if the reader already knows the broad strokes of the war. Rather than viewing the crisis in the aggregate, the reader instead gets vignettes from a large variety of sources that mostly detail personal experiences. While I enjoyed this "on the ground" perspective, I confess that I hungered for more information. I wanted a companion volume that took the human element out and gave the raw statistics and information about the crisis. In short, I wanted to do research on a war that never happened.

That's what makes World War Z a unique and often brilliant book. Brooks' writing is so good that he makes a worldwide zombie pandemic not only seem possible, but plausible. He created more than a dozen characters, each of whom was so fully realized it is hard to believe that they aren't actually real people. Despite the fact that the reader doesn't know all the details of the crisis, it is clear that Brooks had a very elaborate back story that was necessary to maintain consistency throughout the wildly varied personal stories.

The other great part about the book is how closely it resembles the real world politically, and then takes the next step. If you want to know what would happen to alliances, fragile governments, and human infrastructure if a massive and deadly pandemic struck, I think you need to look no further than World War Z. The breakdown of society, the bungled initial responses, the particularly chilling accounts of governments deciding to abandon those who they determined could not be saved. Really, it just amps up what has happened with recent terrorist attacks/natural disasters. It's great, provocative stuff.

So, if you are reading this (unlikely) and trust my opinion (very unlikely) pick up World War Z. You get an incredibly well written and frightening account of the near-end of the world, and you can look cool while doing it. Get it and thank me later.