Somehow I missed reading this in high school; wasn't on the curriculum. But, since I've been reading a lot of WWI and WWII stories in the past year, I picked this up in a sale. It's well worth reading and especially now, a century after the events in the book. Paul Bäumer is a German soldier, barely 18 and sent to war with his classmates. The book is a factual description of life in the trenches, the hardships that most of us cannot even imagine, the friendships, the sacrifices, and the tragedy.

I didn't actually know much about the book other than that it was about WWI and a classic, and I wasn't paying much attention to character and location names at first. As the author's name looks vaguely French, it actually took me quite a few chapters to realize that it was being told from the German perspective rather than the allied forces, which is the perspective of most books I've read so far. And the depressing thing is that it could really have been told by either, and read the same. There was little difference in the experiences of the soldiers on the front lines and the meaninglessness and despair of war was the same on both sides of the lines. These stories need to be remembered, and understood. This book and others like it are important.