World War Z: The Complete Edition

An Oral History of the Zombie War

By: Max Brooks

Narrated by: Various

World War Z: The Complete Edition (Movie Tie-in Edition): An Oral History of the Zombie War is a new version of Max Brooks' episodic zombie novel. The abridged versions of the original stories are now joined with new, unabridged recordings of the episodes that were not included in the original (abridged) version of the audiobook. These additional episodes feature a star-studded cast of narrators to coincide with the upcoming release of the film.

New narrators include Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese, Spiderman star Alfred Molina, The Walking Dead creator Frank Darabont, rapper Common, Firefly star Nathan Fillion, Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg, and members of the casts of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Heroes and more! Max Brooks will be reprising his role as The Interviewer.
The original abridged edition, released in 2006, won an Audie Award for Best Multi-Voiced Performance. Original cast members include Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, Carl & Rob Reiner, and John Turturro.

In this new classic of apocalyptic fiction that feels all too real, the Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. The documentary-style oral history records the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time.

Featuring five more hours of previously unrecorded content, this full-cast recording is read by F. Murray Abraham, Alan Alda, René Auberjonois, Becky Ann Baker, Dennis Boutsikaris, Bruce Boxleitner, Max Brooks, Nicki Clyne, Common, Denise Crosby, Frank Darabont, Dean Edwards, Mark Hamill, Nathan Fillion, Maz Jobrani, Frank Kamai, Michelle Kholos, John McElroy, Ade M’Cormack, Alfred Molina, Parminder Nagra, Ajay Naidu, Masi Oka, Steve Park, Kal Penn, Simon Pegg, Jürgen Prochnow, Carl Reiner, Rob Reiner, Henry Rollins, Jeri Ryan, Jay O. Sanders, Martin Scorsese, Paul Sorvino, David Ogden Stiers, Brian Tee, John Turturro, Eamonn Walker, Ric Young, and Waleed Zuaiter.

©2006 Max Brooks (P)2012 Random House

Will never pre-order again

Would you listen to World War Z: The Complete Edition (Movie Tie-in Edition) again? Why?

I love this book. I mostly love the audio book. I know I will listen again and again, simply because it is so moving and powerful. However, when I pre-ordered this book it was advertised as "unabridged", which is not quite the truth.

1 week later I now get an email stating "... This is an Abridged book, but when you made your purchase, it may have been listed as "Unabridged" on our site, which was in error. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused." Also, chapter 3 has a fairly huge gap in it that readers have picked up on but no one who put the book out seems to be addressing.

Had I known this was still an abridged version of the book, would I still have bought it? Maybe, depending on what had been written about it. I mean, I love this book, so yes, I probably still would have bought it knowing that more of it had been recorded. I just hate being lied to.

Listed as unabridged when I ordered it: Not really

What you get from this book is wonderful. However, you still aren't getting everything. When I ordered the first version (orange cover) it was missing a significant part of the first eyewitness report, and missing other reports entirely. Then they introduced 2 new audiobooks, one with all the witness reports, and the other, the "Lost Tales", with just the new eyewitness reports.

However, there are still some gaps. For example, with Sinclair's testimony in the book he discusses dirigibles and a failed "Silicon Valley" method to kill the zombles. This is missing from the audiobook.

The following link explains this and other omissions. Bottom line: in the original version they left out some witnesses, and for consistency removed references to the missing witnesses' testimony from the witnesses testimonies they retained. When they made the above edition, they kept the previous recordings and added recordings for the new witnesses, but didn't put back the references they had initially removed in the "old" witness reports.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/audiobooks/comments/4nb5uo/what_exactly_is_missing_from_the_complete_edition/

Someday it would be nice if they went back and fixed the witness recordings from the first version of the audiobook, and finally have something that matches.

All this being said, this is one of my favourite audiobooks.

Missing little parts? But still amazing

I've read the book twice and this definitely improves on the source material. I loved Todd the soldier (I swore that was TJ Miller, was shocked to hear it was Mark Hamill) and the two Japanese characters, the blind shovel warrior and the otaku, really great stories to listen to.

Unfortunately I could swear it's missing some material: I remember a very satisfying part where the blind guy drops from a tree and pins the otaku, then they update each other and join forces. That never showed up in the audio book. And a line from the wartime government speaker about trying to figure out which cash is legitimate vs stolen off corpses is gone. Maybe more is missing, I can't say. But these omissions (and the sub-par performance of the 'surfer guy' submersible pilot) are the only reason I can't give this book a perfect score.

It's still great though, definitely buy it.

Incredibly Interesting

I have read/listened to this audiobook several times now. It never gets old and the more I learn about the world, its history, and the social-political-economic structures that exist the more this book blows my mind. It is a unique look at understanding these systems from an apocalyptic perspective. The book is not about zombies but rather about how different parts of different societies would collapse and thrive under a certain set of perimeters that the book proposes. It reads/listens as a non-fiction hypothetical investigation to what would happen on earth if we were faced with a catastrophic apocalypse.

The voice actors and narration is incredible.

Every time I visit a chapter I come away thinking about so many things that we face in societies all over the world and how deeply ingrained these systems are in our civilization. Absolutely fascinating.

side note: nothing like the movie.

Superlative adaptation of a great story

WWZ is a great story delivered as a series of interviews; a format which lends itself unusually well to the audiobook format. The producers having taken great advantage here by assembling an all-star cast to really bring the characters to life. The author, Brooks, plays the interviewer himself, and does a great job of it. Lots of clever, light-touch social commentary wrapped in a great adventure. I couldn't recommend this more for audiobook listeners (especially over the film adaptation, which has nearly nothing to do with the book.)