World War Z

An Oral History of the Zombie War

Max Brooks | 4.15 | 442,703 ratings and reviews

Ranked #1 in Zombie, Ranked #3 in End Of The World — see more rankings.

The 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. less

Buy on Amazon

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of World War Z from the world's leading experts.

Geoffrey Miller World War Z (the book, not the movie) by @maxbrooksauthor is an incredibly well-researched, thoughtful, horrifying page-turner that explores the many ways that people, media, & gov'ts are likely to mismanage global pandemics. Highly prescient must-read. https://t.co/04YMqnu06e https://t.co/7dyx0F9qqB (Source)

P W Singer and August Cole It’s about more than a zombie takeover, it’s about what it means to live together in a prosperous and stable world. (Source)

Greg Garrett World War Z is a novel that bridges the gap between pulp and high literature. It takes a subject matter which we would think of as mainstream geek culture, but it finds universal human themes, develops characters that you care about, and also manages to be culturally critical. It is clearly critical of many of the post-9/11 choices made by the United States and Britain. (Source)

Bradley Voytek World War Z is told from multiple different perspectives and multiple different cultures. It’s about how they respond to the impending apocalypse: what the Americans do and what happens in the Middle East, how individuals respond. So you have a couple of people who are already preparing for the end of the world and you’ve got the military view. It’s great because Max Brooks really pulls together this multi-cultural viewpoint, it’s not just a Brad Pitt action-movie vehicle. (Source)

Rankings by Category

World War Z is ranked in the following categories:

#87 in Action
#87 in Adaptation
#98 in Adventure Fiction
#10 in Alternate History
#99 in Audio
#19 in Broadway
#75 in Cool
#19 in Diseases
#80 in Documentaries
#62 in Dystopian
#60 in Entertaining
#59 in Entertainment
#61 in Fun
#10 in Horror
#4 in Interviewing
#17 in Monsters
#29 in NPR
#50 in Nerdy
#92 in Nook
#23 in Orange
#7 in Pandemic
#4 in Post-Apocalyptic
#77 in Recent
#19 in Scary
#10 in Sci-Fi Horror
#63 in Science Fiction
#76 in Science Fiction Fantasy
#41 in Story
#25 in Survival
#22 in Trade
#56 in Utopian
#16 in War
#14 in Wars
#93 in World
#72 in World History

Similar Books

If you like World War Z, check out these similar top-rated books:

Learn: What makes Shortform summaries the best in the world?

Learn More