[Mini Review] JD's Take: World War Z (Max Brooks)

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, and that goes double for us now, as the long rebuilding process continues and the horrors of the war begin to fade into memory. Before long, there will be few alive who remember the heroism, the bravery, the depravity, and the fear of that time. You owe it to yourself, to your family, to those you lost and those you love and those who will come later to read this book. It will be hard to revisit those years, hard to listen to enablers and profiteers justify themselves, hard to listen to survivors forced to remember what they did to stay alive.

Almost a series of short stories, this account can be frustrating at time when it leaves you desperately wanting to follow a story further. The storytelling varies from amazing to decent, but on the whole the stories are gripping and engrossing. This is not the cold accounting of facts of the official reports. No survival rate comparisons or infection maps. This is the war in the words of the people who lived it and it is essential for us to remember the human cost (and the human causes) of the war that nearly destroyed us all.