Somewhere about half of the 70 million men and women serving in the war are killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.

The brutality and horrors of the war are only one of the major themes in the book. It also addresses the alienation of the soldiers. Although remaining alive to the end of the war, many men return either physically or mentally maimed or both. Spiritually, they are empty shells who can no longer believe in a just world. Remarque comments in the epigraph that his novel is primarily for "a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped the shells, were destroyed by the war."

Author Erich Maria Remarque was 18 years old when he start fighting in WWI, and like Bomer witnessed the horrors of the battles first hand. He wrote his book in 1928, and it became well-known throughout the world as the first novel that...
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