Remarkably Short Book Reviews: Halloween-ish Edition

When hearing that a book is written by Max Brooks, the son of Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, your first instinct might be to expect humor. That's certainly where you'd find The Zombie Survival Guide filed in the bookstore, though it lacks even a single line that can truly be characterized as a joke. Instead, the humor is found in the duplication of the serious tone found in other worst-case scenario guides. Brooks assures the reader that this is a problem for which he must prepare, and that preparation must start now. Going beyond the send up of survival guides, the book is an impressive piece of world building. Brooks lays out the ground rules for his zombies-what causes them (a virus called Solanum), what can hurt them (only destroying the brain), how best to protect yourself from them-and attempts to dispel the myths that have been spread by Hollywood. After giving us the list of absolutely essential supplies and telling us what weapons work best (machetes, M1 carbines, and absolutely not a flamethrower), he gives a brief account of some of the recorded zombie attacks in history. It's certainly not much like any other book I've read recently, but I enjoyed it. In fact I especially enjoyed it as an accompaniment to the next book I wanted to talk about.

 

Building on the ground work from The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z tells the story of zombie outbreaks that turn into a pandemic. The book is presented as a collection of interviews performed by the unnamed narrator revealing life at the beginning of the outbreak, during "The Great Panic" and throughout the war. The very long war. Make no mistake about it, this is not a war that we win, at least not for a long time. Unlike most zombie stories, this is not limited to a single town or even a single country. Most of the world is overrun with zombies. No official death toll is ever given, but with 200 million infected in North America along with over half of China, the number would be in the billions. Each interview gives us a new perspective on the war. We hear from people all over the world who were involved in finding outbreaks, planning, military operations, from politicians or even from just regular people who tried to go far enough north that the zombies would freeze during winter. Brooks does an impressive job of giving each person their own distinctive voice and building the characters despite the limited space for each section. While the book uses these vignettes to point out mistakes we've made in the past and those we might make in the future (as well as those things we get right), Brooks usually allows the story and the character to be the true star (one interview does stand out as being somewhat less than subtle, but it was the exception rather than the rule). In all, it is impressive that Brooks is able to get as much emotional impact out of so many of these sections. I definitely recommend this one as a very unique and worthwhile read. In fact, I also recommend the audiobook which, while abridged, has some talented actors playing the parts of the various interviewees including Alan Alda, Rob and Carl Reiner, John Tuturro and Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, as a veteran of the disastrous Battle of Yonkers.