The Zombie Survival GuideComplete Protection from the Living Dead

A thorough handbook for how to avoid having the living dead chomp on your brains.
Because “ignorance is the undead’s strongest ally,” Max Brooks has written The Zombie Survival Guide, a thorough handbook for how to avoid having the living dead chomp on your brains. The book exhaustively explores fact and fiction about zombie physiology and behavior (they don’t actually live on brains), examines historical instances of the rising of the dead (never, ever explore a seemingly abandoned ship) and provides tips for both fight and flight in environments as diverse as your home or the North Pole. Never again will you be trapped on the second floor of a house swarming with zombies and not know how to do anything but scream. Both Brooks and narrator Marc Cashman avoid being overly “winky,” employing a matter-of-fact, Boy Scout manual tone when discussing how to outwit corpses. A too-literal, scientific explanation for the undead involving a virus takes away from the creatures' inherent horror — a mistake Brooks avoids in the follow-up, World War Z, which effectively imagines a war between humans and zombies. Still, there is much that is clever and entertaining, making this the one book David Sedaris recommended on his recent lecture tour that was not written by David Sedaris.