World War Z

by Max Brooks

If you like history books, if you like apocalyptic scenarios, and especially if you like books about zombies, then “World War Z” by Max Brooks just might be the right book for you. Brooks writes as if he is interviewing various survivors from all over the world 10 years after the end of the Zombie War that almost wiped out humanity. From the mouths of the people who lived through it, we hear about the

first warning signs in China and South Africa, different ways the virus spread and how leaders in all countries refused to believe and then tried to blame everyone but themselves for the mass deaths and re-animations.

The narrator interviews key figures in the war, including such notables as the author of the South African scheme that started to turn things around and the leaders in charge of the ultimate “take back the world” strikes towards the end.

The book – was made into a movie in 2013 starring Brad Pitt – is full of both historically-accurate and invented details covering many countries and cultures and if you ignore the zombie content, reads just like a

collection of oral histories. I especially loved the section on Japan’s homeland evacuations, and the multiple viewpoints of how China, Russia and the

Ukraine all responded to the swarms of living dead.