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Five heartbreaking stars for this classic novel about World War I.

I first read All Quiet on the Western Front my freshman year of college, thanks to Dr. K's humanities course. During this re-read, I paused not only in appreciation of what soldiers and their families suffer during war, but also for all the great teachers who spend their days trying to inspire students to have Perspective and Big Ideas and to Think Critically. I remember how meaningful it was to read this book when I was 19, and it helped shape how I think about history and conflict and war. I was reminded of this quote from Pat Conroy: "If there is more important work than teaching, I hope to learn about it before I die."

I've been thinking a lot about my freshman humanities course because All Quiet on the Western Front was recently chosen as a Common Read for the college campus where I work, and I'm helping to plan the program that will hopefully inspire hundreds of other students to read this book. It's giving me a contented circle-of-life feeling.

Back to the novel itself, which follows German soldier Paul Bäumer and his fellow classmates who enlisted in the war. We see their stoicism and also their mental and physical stress. We suffer with them when they are hungry, and we rejoice when they are fed. We spend an anxious night with Paul when he is stuck in No Man's Land during an attack, and witness his anguish when he kills another man for the first time. We follow him as he goes home on leave to visit his sick mother, and we understand why he can't answer his family's questions about the front. He lies and says it's fine, the stories are exaggerated, the soldiers are treated well. But nothing will ever be fine again, and we all know it.

While reading this book, I used countless post-its to mark quotes. This is a classic that is both easy to read and astonishingly beautiful in its clarity of writing. Highly recommended.

And finally, three cheers to you, Dr. K. Thank you for everything you've done to inspire students.

Favorite Quotes
"The soldier is on friendlier terms than other men with his stomach and intestines. Three-quarters of his vocabulary is derived from these regions, and they give an intimate flavor to expressions of his greatest joy as well as of his deepest indignation. It is impossible to express oneself in any other way so clearly and pithily. Our families and our teachers will be shocked when we go home, but here it is the universal language."

"For a moment we fall silent. There is in each of us a feeling of constraint. We are all sensible of it; it needs no words to communicate it. It might easily have happened that we should not be sitting here on our boxes to-day; it came damn near to that. And so everything is new and brave, red poppies and good food, cigarettes and summer breeze."

"While they taught that duty to one's country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger ... We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from the true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

"The war has ruined us for everything."

"We have become wild beasts. We do not fight, we defend ourselves against annihilation. It is not against men that we fling our bombs, what do we know of men in this moment when Death is hunting us down..."

"Modern trench-warfare demands knowledge and experience; a man must have a feeling for the countours of the ground, an ear for the sound and character of the shells, must be able to decide beforehand where they will drop, how they will burst, and how to shelter from them."

"Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades � words, words, but they hold the horror of the world."

"Thus momentarily we have the two things a soldier needs for contentment: good food and rest. That's not much when one comes to think of it. A few years ago we would have despised ourselves terribly. But now we are almost happy. It is all a matter of habit � even the front-line."

"Terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks; � but it kills, if a man thinks about it."

"But our comrades are dead, we cannot help them, they have their rest � and who knows what is waiting for us? We will make ourselves comfortable and sleep, and eat as much as we can stuff into our bellies, and drink and smoke so that hours are not wasted. Life is short."

"We were never very demonstrative in our family; poor folk who toil and are full of cares are not so. It is not their way to protest what they already know. When my mother says to me 'dear boy,' it means much more than when another uses it."

"I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. I see that the keenest brains of the world invent weapons and words to make it yet more refined and enduring. And all men of my age, here and over there, throughout the whole world see these things; all my generation is experiencing these things with me."

"And men will not understand us � for the generation that grew up before us, though it has passed these years with us already had a home and a calling; now it will return to its old occupations, and the war will be forgotten � and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push us aside. We will be superfluous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be bewildered; � the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin."