“World War II and its consequences will not leave our consciousness and sense of civilization; the question of the circumstances under which the best writers made their voices heard remains as urgent today as it ever was. John R. Carpenter is to be congratulated on his detailed and courageous refutation of the often heard saw that in wartime, the Muses are silent. His book belongs in all academic as well as public collections.” —Emery George, poet and editor of Contemporary East European Poetry

“John Carpenter’s Wall, Watchtower, and Pencil Stub is the story of writing, and the urgency of communication, during World War II. This fascinating and engaging account discusses work from many nations and touches on a wide variety of examples, from sophisticated literature to scrawled notes thrown by prisoners from trains. The pages dealing with the war’s role in fostering distrust of rhetoric, euphemism, and abstraction are especially timely in this era of marketing and political newspeak.” —Philip Fried, poet and editor of the Manhattan Review

"This book’s real strength is in what it suggests about our desire (and perhaps need) to bear witness to war’s horrors."—Booklist