“World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War” is the most recent book from Max Brooks, author of “The Zombie Survival Guide.” WWZ chronicles the events that took place during the Zombie Wars from perspectives of the different people involved. First off I want to say this book is very good but unlike “The Zombie Survival Guide” it’s a lot less serious humor and more serious and on occasion sad. Interviewees range from citizens who fought against the hoards, filmmakers who gave hope to the people, and even a few soldiers.

WWZ covers the supposed beginnings of the zombie war with the first possible outbreak in a small Chinese village to the subsequent outbreaks in North America, Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Also it talks about humanities failed attempts to take down the zombies and each country’s own tactics used to quell the hoard.

As I said before this book isn’t like “The Zombie Survival Guide” where there is a dark humor present throughout the book. “World War Z” is a very dark book with the individual stories of people fights for survival involving cannibalism, murder, and just mass accounts of chaos and insanity. Such as the the Redeker Plan which details, “…only a small fraction of civilian population could be evacuated into the safe zone. These people would be saved not only to provide a labor pool for the eventual wartime economic restoration, but also to reserve the legitimacy and stability of the government…Those who were left behind were to be herded into special isolation zones. They were to be ‘human bait,’ distracting the undead from following the retreating army into the safe zone.”

But even with all these horrible atrocities you’d think there’d be some happy beacon of hope among all the death and selfish murder… no, there isn’t. This whole book is pretty much depressing, people resorting to cannibalism to live, militaries leaving whole cities of sick, hungry people to get away from the zombie attack. Granted there are one or two stories which aren’t totally bad, such as the mention of five colleges banding together, or 300 students victoriously fighting off 10,000 zombies.

If you’ve read “The Zombie Survival Guide” and haven’t checked this one out I recommend it, its pretty dark but it’s filled with zombie goodness so any fan of the genre should be pleased.