Erich Maria Remarque was a German soldier during the World War and has written a record of life in the trenches ["All Quiet on the Western Front"]….

[As] the terse story marches forward we encounter the things that other war books have made known to us: the trench mud, the lice, the ineradicable rats, the tension, noise, fear, pain, hunger, horror….

On this long pilgrimage, so often ghastly and ferocious, there is more than the routine of the trenches…. Perhaps most important there is the inner drama—the fever that rises and falls in the souls of the fighters as the war goes on. To this, indeed, the whole story is shaped—its sharply etched descriptions of suffering, endurance, grim humor and climactic event….

"All Quiet on the Western Front" will give any sensitive reader a terrific impact. It is a book that strikes a succession of hard...