From the Stacks: World War Z

“From the Stacks” is about books, but not the new ones. While we love to look at books that are just coming out, we have stacks and stacks of books already in print. Of those multitudes we seek to find the titles that you may have not heard about but should be adding to you reading list.

To be forthright, I am not a horror guy. My tastes are broad enough to encompass Fantasy and SciFi, through military and spy thrillers, but horror, be it books or movies, never was my thing. Besides, I never really had much respect for zombies. What real threat is a stupid, shuffling monster that a two-year-old could outrun?

At least how I used to think. I now know better and am secretly preparing for the coming zombie apocalypse.

The reason for this change of heart is Max Brook’s World War Z- An Oral History of the Zombie War.

“Two hundred million zombies. Who can visualize that type of number, much less combat it?”

an excerpt from World War Z

Mr. Brooks has created something unique in this book, which is not something we often get to say about anything in publishing today. Technically it is a future history tale, but what he has done is tell it through a long series of faux interviews. He tells the story through the eyes of those who “lived” it, following the story from the early appearances of the zombies through the height of the global conflict and into the aftermath. Those he interviews are from all over the world. From South Africa to China, Ireland, the United States and many others, the interviews provide the pieces of a mosaic Brooks skillfully weaves.

For me, perhaps the most striking aspect of his story is the level of detail he provides. As he interviews an individual from one country he provides you with the nuances to make you believe he is actually talking to someone from that area. From prospective to colloquialisms, there is an authenticity that rings through an aspect which truly adds to the realism of the horrors they relate. Similarly, Brooks demonstrates insights into the inner workings, and failings, of governments

and the military that are so horrifyingly realistic that it is scarier then a pack of “Zeds” crashing through your bedroom window.

“The book of war, the one we’ve been writing since one ape slapped another was completely useless in this situation. We had to write another one from scratch.”

an excerpt from World War Z

The book chronicles exactly how governments, institutions, corporations and ultimately society would fail in the face of a true global emergency. As a veteran, I read the interviews from the soldiers who fought the battles and shivered with how Brooks eerily hit on each point of how the bureaucratic Ring Knockers (graduates of West Point) would have approached the fight. I think it was the descriptions of the Battle of Yonkers that I developed a respect for zombies. I could picture myself, M16 in hand, trying to fight zombies the same was as I had been trained to fight the Soviets. Luckily we never found out if those tactics would have worked on the frozen fields of West Germany, but it surely won’t (and didn’t) work on a couple of million living dead.

The book itself does follow a linear story, in a traditional sense, but really doesn’t have that arc of rising action to a climax. Nor was it really meant to. It is very much the sort of book you would see written after any major disaster. After the governments release their official findings on a given tragedy, there is still the human stories that have no place in the sterility of published findings. Brooks sets the tone in the opening pages by telling the reader this and that he is going to tell you the stories of people. Through these tellings we are privy to the entire epic.

Any good review should tell you if the reviewer recommends the item reviewed (as if they have been endowed with some unique grace to possess the one true opinion). Personally, I will tell you to read it- twice. But, if you are the sort who thinks, be prepared to think about things larger than yourself. This is not some Stephen King novel that may scare you a little and be forgotten by the time you toss the book on the shelf. It is a complete picture of the world unraveling. Yes, it is about zombies and zombies aren’t real (I hope). But, if you take this story and replace the word “zombie” with Bird Flu, Ebola, terrorism, imperialism, Rosie O’Donnell or any other potential pandemic the media tells us could sweep the planet, you see exactly how things could fall apart.

Now if you will excuse me, I have to go sharpen my Lobo*.

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press

* “Lobo” is short for “Lobotomizer”, a war time invention that looks like a cross between a double bladed battle axe and a shovel.

NOTE: This post was originally published with Pop Culture Zoo on June 20, 2008