Max Brooks knows from zombies.

From his Zombie Survival Guide, which instructs readers how to survive a zombie attack, to World War Z, which describes the zombie apocalypse, Brooks has treated zombies as a genuine threat to modern civilization. He takes the theme to a new level in The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks, a graphic novel/history book that describes in some detail a series of, um, recorded attacks by zombies over the ages.

And Brooks certainly covers his history. The book begins in prehistoric times, with an attack recorded only by cavewall pictographs. It continues from there, touching on incidents ranging from Roman-occupied Britain to 16th-century Siberia, from a 17th-century slave ship to a North African outpost of the French Foreign Legion in 1893. The tales also include military experimentation and end in a late 20th-century incident in Joshua Tree, California. All are presented as brief vignettes, not in-depth narratives, but they're certainly adequate for the purpose.

The book is a pleasure to read for zombie enthusiasts, although anyone who takes these things seriously (as Brooks himself would have you do) will no doubt be unsettled, if not downright terrorized, by the stories within. I mean, these zombies are relentless, man. And, for mindless drones whose thoughts never stray far beyond moaning and chewing, they're pretty good at running down and trapping their prey.

Artwork by Ibraim Roberson is tight and thrilling.