All Quiet on the Western Front

This book is really excellent, but also super depressing. It's about the horror of World War I, as told from the German perspective. For those of you not keen on history, the Germans lost WWI quite badly, so you know going into it that it's not going to end overly well for those involved. While lots of books and films manage to show the horror of warfare, what makes AQotWF so good is that it also captures the toll of warfare on the individual souls of the soldiers involved. WWI was unique in that the war was  essentially being fought by children, with huge numbers of the soldiers falling under the age of twenty. WWI was also unique because it was the first war in which industry and technology really began to dramatically alter the face of warfare. Officers still carried swords, bayonets were still fitted to rifles, and horses were used in the cavalry; yet explosive artillery shells and gas attacks continually ravaged the front lines, while incessant machine gun fire and airplane attacks picked off those unfortunate enough to cross into no-man's land. The world was unprepared for war on the scale of WWI, and the cost was extremely high both in individual lives and in personal, individual internal scarring. The novel's narrator is frequently explaining to the reader how, in order to mentally survive the anguish of the war, he has to become less than human. War is shown to be an animalizing force, one which requires that a person shed themselves of any trace of humanity in favor of the primal forces that lead to survival. It's a choice between an animal life or a human death, even though many ultimately get neither. All Quiet shows the reader the ways in which modern warfare scar the land, the soul, and entire generations. It's writing is bleak, yet powerful. For anyone interested in history, this book is definitely a must read.

Score: 8/10
Read this book if: You are a history buff, or need a reminder of the negative aspects of technological progress.
Don't read this book if: You are easily upset by gruesome writing. This was a crazy bloody war, and the book isn't shy about depicting it in all its gruesome horror.