Plight of the Living Dead: What Real-Life Zombies Reveal about Our World--And Ourselves (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780143131410)

A brain-bending exploration of real-life zombies and mind controllers, and what they reveal to us about nature--and ourselves

Zombieism isn't just the stuff of movies and TV shows like The Walking Dead. It's real, and it's happening in the world around us, from wasps and worms to dogs and moose--and even humans.

In Plight of the Living Dead, science journalist Matt Simon documents his journey through the bizarre evolutionary history of mind control. Along the way, he visits a lab where scientists infect ants with zombifying fungi, joins the search for kamikaze crickets in the hills of New Mexico, and travels to Israel to meet the wasp that stings cockroaches in the brain before leading them to their doom.

Nothing Hollywood dreams up can match the brilliant, horrific zombies that natural selection has produced time and time again. Plight of the Living Dead is a surreal dive into a world that would be totally unbelievable if very smart scientists didn't happen to be proving it's real, and most troublingly--or maybe intriguingly--of all: how even we humans are affected.

"Fantastic . . . You'll be thinking about this book long after you're done reading it." --Kelly Weinersmith, New York Times bestselling coauthor of Soonish

Author: Matt Simon
ISBN-10: 0143131419
ISBN-13: 9780143131410
Publisher: Penguin Books
Language: English
Published: 10/02/2018
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.70d

Review Citation(s):
Shelf Awareness 10/09/2018
Publishers Weekly 06/18/2018
Library Journal 09/01/2018 pg. 74
Booklist 09/01/2018 pg. 20