Review by Scott Lefebvre
I received my copy of this highly recommendable book from a friend for my birthday with the explanation, "This book is perfect for you. You really need a copy." And they were right. It is perfect for me. And everyone needs their own copy.
Steeped in the long precedent of American and Italian Zombie films, this book is a truly pleasurable read even for those people that are more into survival guides and less into zombies.
I already owned the standard United States Armed Forces Survival Guide (FM 21-76 / June 1992), creatively titled "SURVIVAL", but I had never gotten around to reading it from cover to cover. Know why? It's boring! It's more the type of book that you would take out for a week of extreme camping with some of your crazier friends. In comparison Max Brooks gives us a survival guide that is both practical and entertaining. A survival guide so readable that I found it difficult to put it down to get the half hour of sleep that I allow myself each night.
The most attractive quality of this book is it's graceful combination of humor and practical advice for recognizing the signs of an impending outbreak of the undead, and surviving outbreaks of the undead in every possible scenario from a small, local group of zombie attacks to the complete failure of society as we know it when the hordes of zombies can no longer be controlled by our unsuspecting local and national governmental agencies.
Of course the idea is completely implausible, but that doesn't stop any enthusiasts of post-apocalyptic films from daydreaming about what they would do when the walls come down. Admit it. If you're reading this review, you've probably got your plan for action in the event of an invasion of zombies, aliens, or mutated nuclear holocaust survivors squirreled away in the back of your brain. And this is why this book is for you and I, because it helps us to refine our plans.
Discussions about how to survive in a post-apocalyptic world happen at least once a week at my house, and this book neatly summarizes in published forms many of the conclusions that we had come to through our discussions. Chapters help you to decide on: What type of weapons to use. Where to go. What type of transportation to use to get there. And how to secure your home away from home from the hordes of the undead.
Although this book is a fundamental addition to my personal library it could have been lightened by about seventy pages by leaving out the fictional chronological timeline of zombie events throughout recorded history listed in the index as "RECORDED ATTACKS". For someone that recommends traveling lightly and quickly one might think he'd want to make his guidebook as portable as possible. Although admittedly humorous, this significant section of the book seems tacked on and would perhaps have been more worthy as a bonus supplement available online, or perhaps as an appendix to the author's next highly anticipated book "World War Z: An Oral history of the Zombie War" released in September of 2006.
In conclusion my copy of the Zombie Survival Guide is proudly displayed on my bookshelf and makes a graceful transition between my military manuals and my horror themed section. I've got a machete in my trunk and I'm ready to go when you are.
Three Rivers Press, an Imprint of Crown Books, also a sub-publisher of Random House.
Related links:
Crown Publishers: [Three Rivers Press is an imprint.]
http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/index.html
The online listing of this book in the Crown Catalog:
http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400049622
The Zombie Survival Guide Online:
http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/zombiesurvivalguide/
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