World War Z, 2006

World War Z by Max Brooks, published in 2006. I rarely post current books but to me World War Z has already established itself as a classic. It recounts the so called "Zombie War", caused by a virus called "Solanum" that reanimates corpses to mindless beings with immense bloodlust (that's what you call zombies usually). The book introduces a great many settings and characters, all of which tell their story in a fictional oral history of the cause of the outbreak, initial panic and aftermath of the crisis.

The Zombie Survival Guide, Brooks' first book, was a fun read, but with this novel he takes his obvious Zombie-obsession to a whole new level and creates, as has already been mentioned, a future classic.

It goes by many names: "The Crisis," "The Dark Years," "The Walking Plague," as well as newer and more "hip" titles such as "World War Z" or "Z War One." I personally dislike this last moniker as it implies an inevitable "Z War Two." For me, it will always be "The Zombie War," and while many may protest the scientific accuracy of the word zombie, they will be hardpressed to discover a more globally accepted term for the creatures that almost caused our extinction. Zombie remains a devastating word, unrivaled in its power to conjure up so many memories or emotions, and it is these memories, and emotions, that are the subject of this book.

This record of the greatest conflict in human history owes its genesis to a much smaller, much more personal conflict between me and the chairperson of the United Nation's Postwar Commission Report. My initial work for the Commission could be described as nothing short of a labor of love. My travel stipend, my security access, my battery of translators, both human and electronic, as well as my small, but nearly priceless voice activated transcription "pal" (the greatest gift the world's slowest typist could ask for), all spoke to the respect and value my work was afforded on this project. So, needless to say, it came as a shock when I found almost half of that work deleted from the report's final edition.

Read World War Z by Max Brooks