MaxBrooksAuthor

I haven't received any other criticism from any other government. No complaints from North Korea (yet!) On the contrary, the reason I'm now a non-resident senior fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point and the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security is because World War Z got on the reading list at the U.S. Naval War College.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) banned, or rather, tried to censor parts of my book because I criticized them. That's forbidden in China. The government has all the power so they have to appear perfect. That's what happens in dictatorships. If the people at the top aren't perfect, then they have no right to rule. In our system, we assume that people aren't perfect, that's why we have elections to clean house. The Chinese Communist Party doesn't their people reading a book that exposes the leadership as imperfect.

I think human beings are slow to realize a threat. We instinctually want to deny danger. It's an ego-defense mechanism. The problem is, if you deny too much, and are caught unprepared, panic sets in. I think we've been gutting our global health institutions for too long. In rich countries like the USA, we now take public health for granted. We don't have that gut-churning fear our grandparents used to have when Polio and other disease raged through the population. This, hopefully, could be a wakeup call for us to spend the necessary money to reinforce our public-global health networks. I'm just so sorry that this wakeup call is coming too late for people who are already sick.

Thank you. Audiobooks mean a lot to me. I worked really hard casting "WWZ" and I'm right now working to cast "Devolution". I'll be posting in the near future about our cast as they come in.

My dad is fine. But he's 93 so I have to be very careful about infecting him. That's why I've cancelled some appearances and might possibly have to pivot my whole book tour to a virtual tour. Right now I'm preparing for my son's school to be closed. I think about my dad and my mother inlaw (who's had lung cancer twice) and all the vulnerable people in my life I could infect if I'm not careful.