A Review of World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

While reading World War Z by Max Brooks, I thought again and again what a great movie this would make; that is, for people like myself who like Zombie movies.

Incessant swarms of the undead -- called "Zack," or "Zed Head," or at times simply "Z" by the heroes and heroines who combat them in World War Z -- keep coming back for more in this new take on an old theme by the author of 2003's Zombie Survival Guide.

World War Z is a novel about our world nearly destroyed in a Zombie apocalypse. Author Max Brooks, son of comedic genius Mel Brooks, is fast emerging a new master of the Zombie genre. Despite his pedigree and despite his stint as a writer for "Saturday Night Live," World War Z is no comedy. Readers (or viewers when the movie comes out) should expect no Shaun of the Dead, the popular 2004 Zombie spoof horror movie. Rather, Max Brooks takes an ambitious, deadly serious approach to World War Z, creating what I imagine would happen if George A. Romero and Studs Turkel had a baby. The novel is written in the aftermath of the Great Zombie War, and in the first-person voices of its survivors.

The world was in a pandemic blight. Ghouls walked the earth. Cities fell. Entire populations became infected -- or simply disappeared. Humanity, suspending too long its own disbelief, waiting too long and reacting too slowly, suffered as much from ignorance and superstition as from the damage done by the advancing zombie hordes. (A zombie here, a zombie there ... all of a sudden, its flesh-eating zombies everywhere!) Alas, communities bond, safe zones are formed, governments actually cooperate, and in the human spirit there is found a glimmer of hope just when the world as we know it seems to be at the end of its collective rope. And, so it goes in World War Z ...