World War Z

Inspired by The Good War (1984), Studs Terkel's Pulitzer Prize-winning oral history of World War II, World War Z is an unusually intelligent piece of genre fiction, in which author Max Brooks uses the familiar idea of a virus causing a zombie outbreak to examine pressing contemporary issues such as government competence and corruption, racial prejudice, religious intolerance and American arrogance. Even before publication of the book, whose full title is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, it sparked a bidding war over the movie rights, with Brad Pitt's company Plan B slugging it out with Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way for the rights to the big screen. The movie version has moved far from the original story.  For full article click here.