Indiana Public Radio: Outreach

World War Z: an Oral History of the Zombie War
– Reviewed by Cheri Ellefson

Max Brooks' World War Z: an Oral History of the Zombie War, offers a fresh spin to an old horror story. Though choppy at times, it is easy to appreciate Brooks' thoroughness and ingenuity. In Z, an unnamed government employee crisscrosses the globe to create the United Nation's Postwar Commission Report of "The Crisis." However, much of the intimate survivor stories as happened in remote African villages to underground tunnels in Paris, he laments, are deleted from the official Report. Z is the untold, emotional accounts left out so "future generations could study the war without being influenced by the 'human factor.'"

While much of Z recalls brave personal anecdotes of escape, fighting and pure survival, it narrows its focus to military tactics practiced in combating the undead. This twist is what particularly makes Brooks' book stand out among other zombie novels. The author visits military personnel intimately involved in several countries, mainly in the United States, but also other powerhouses such as China, India, Russia, and Brazil. The U.S., blinded by ego, achieves victory after too many unnecessary lives are lost when old-war tactics prove ineffective against the plagued. Dropping bombs, for example, only maimed, but did not kill their targets. One unusual tactic, however, did thrive. The U.S. military trained small household dogs to sniff out and record unknown, potentially zombie-infested territory before entering it themselves. The U.S. also ditched jail cells and instead publicly humiliated every caught criminal to deter petty and horrendous crimes alike. In Z, their system worked.

In China, the government insisted they "had the problem under control," but Navy Captain Chen knew better. He gathered his crew and their families, left China, and escaped underwater in a nuclear submarine. Others tried to flee by water as well, abandoning all hope on land, through yachts, boats and make-shift floating crafts, only to be pulled under by zombies who had been bitten, drowned, and bobbed back to the surface to feed.

Every country, in addition to the U.S. and China, reacted uniquely akin to its 'personality,' and I applaud Brooks for his obvious research, analysis and creativity. Z was truly powerful and thought provoking.