Books All Quiet on the Western Front
Books and Publications Average Rating:

Rating: - comments on service
The copy of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT arrived promptly and in perfect condition, all one could hope for from an on-line purchase.

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Rating: - by: Michael Sobeski
This was an excellent book. I'm not a big reader but this war story was not hard to read at all. If you like lots of blood and guts this book is for you. You get to see inside the life of soldier during World War I on all aspects. Training camps, frontline, hospitals and more all incorporated into this amazing story. Read about life in the camp and get one on one with German soldier Paul Baumer and you will feel like you are into the action.

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Rating: - All Quiet on the Western Front
First being introduced to this novel for a school project, I found All Quiet on the Western Front to be a truly powerful book. I have read many books about war before, but never one like Erich Maria Remarque's. The horrors of WWI are told straight forward through a young German soldier's eyes. He is faced with terrible living condiitions and struggles with the cruelty of war. So if you are looking for a true war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front will give you a new point of view on life during WWI.

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Rating: - Beautifully written, haunting and heartbreaking
Previously I have been watching Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I developed an interest in WWI - a vicious war, and one most people criticize as an unjustifiable war. Tolkien served in WWI and much like Remarque, the horror and inhumanity he witnessed during service manifested itself in his writing. Both Tolkien and Remarque despised the vicious atrocities imposed upon the men expected to fight.

I was struck at how wrenching this novel is, and at times how hilarious. There is passage when the main character is at the front and enduring heavy shelling, and several horses are severely maimed. The agonizing screeching of these animals is a striking out-cry against the indiscriminating shells dropped by men. Another passage, when Paul is injured and in a Catholic hospital, he is just dozing off to sleep in the morning after enduring a disruptive night in the hospital and quite loses his composure when some nuns begin praying in the hall outside his room. In his anger he throws a bottle into the hallway and it shatters. The result is an interrogation, but the injured soldiers are bailed out by a commrade who falsely claims he tossed the glass bottle. The injured commrade has sustained a head injury and has a permit to not be held responsible for his actions for a period of time. This causes the injured soldiers to feel "overjoyed" because, it seems, they can afford to no longer be annoyed by others. However, when the time comes to have their bandages changes, the nuns find their little revenge against the soldiers. Ha ha.

Remarque characterizes the doctors are indifferent and interested in performing needless operations on the soldiers. He characterizes the certain authority firgures (such as teachers and commanding officers) as abusive and basically failures for the young soldiers who neededand relied upon their guiadance to protect them from the world, not to exploit them for it.

The kids suffer through much. Unclean conditions, disgusting food, psychological torment, alienation from the families and ideas that lead them through their school years.

This is a powerful book that succintly described the horrors of war - both in battle and when soldiers are on leave, trying to reassimilate into humanity. Poor Paul - one by one his supports are taken from him.

It's a misery that can only ultimately manifest itself in the needless death brought upon a young man thrown into a waste of a war.