How does one tell the story of the Vietnam War? How can any amount of text put together the immense complexities, intricacies and atrocities of this dark period in American history and say, this is it - this is the Vietnam War?

That may be an impossible task, but Christian G. Appy's latest book, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides, does better than anyone can expect in its attempt to cover the vast scope of the Vietnam War through a detailed and diverse oral history.

Appy brings together the testimonies of 135 men and women from all sides and all levels of involvement in the war, ultimately offering vivid snapshots of not only the political and military aspects of the war, but also its social, cultural and psychological effects.

Appy's sources are as diverse and extensive as they are passionate and sincere. Alexander Haig, former chief of staff under President Nixon, reflects on his support for the Christmas bombing of 1972. Filmmaker Oliver Stone tells how his own experiences on the battlefield play themselves out in his movie Platoon.

Tran Thi Gung, who fought for the Viet Cong as a young woman, recalls how she saw U.S. soldiers helping their wounded as "sitting ducks" and, after her first battle, won an award named "Valiant Destroyer of American Infantrymen."

And Playboy Magazine's 1965 Playmate of the Year, who hand-delivered the first issue of a lifetime subscription to a U.S. lieutenant serving in the war, demonstrates that in the early days of the war, many Americans didn't even know where Vietnam was, let alone what American troops were doing there. She packed sweaters for the trip.

Together with the author's well-written and concise chapter introductions - which give readers a detailed, chronological history of the war along with Appy's own analysis - these interviews cover an amazing amount of ground.

"Although we almost instinctively divide the war into separate categories," Appy writes in his preface, "each individual's experience was, in fact, inextricably connected to those of many others about which he or she knew little if anything. Bringing them together allows us to envision the war's full scale and significance."

What is most impressive is that Patriots lives up to its subtitle and addresses all sides of the war. Appy notes that we often speak of the war as an "American tragedy," as if it were something disastrous that happened only to us. But for the Vietnamese, what they call the American War was much more devastating.

"Had the United States lost the same proportion of its population as Vietnam," Appy writes, "the Wall in Washington would include not 58,193 names, but at least 12 million. Almost every Vietnamese family continues to feel the weight of the war's history."

Appy has made a name for himself as a reputable historian. His book Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam appears on many college history syllabi. He has been a professor at MIT and Harvard, and he is editor of the series Culture, Politics and the Cold War.

In Patriots, he pays special attention to the question that still burns within the American consciousness: Why?

"Five American presidents might have ended U.S. intervention in Vietnam," he writes, "but all of them acted as if they were trapped by the history they inherited."

But history has a tendency to repeat itself, and Patriots may be an important book now more than ever. American foreign policy hasn't changed much since the early days of the Vietnam War.

Like Osama bin Laden and his freedom fighters battling the Soviet Union during the 1980s, the Viet Minh - who would later be called the Viet Cong - received supplies and training from the United States as they battled Japanese occupation after World War II, and then went on to become its enemy.

Vo Nguyen Giap, who was the military commander of the Viet Minh and later the North Vietnamese forces, says in Patriots that "we won the war because we would rather die than live in slavery." A few pages before that statement, an American operative of the Office of Strategic Services (a predecessor to the CIA) recalls teaching Giap how to throw a hand grenade.

From Cambodia to Kent State, the My Lai massacre to Norman Morrison's self-immolation outside the Pentagon, the Tet offensive to Bobbie the Weathergirl, Patriots presents the lessons of the Vietnam War through chilling recollections, inspiring stories of bravery and heart-wrenching tales of barbarism. The stories it tells range from anecdotal to profound, and this book will become an indispensable part of Vietnam War history.

Whether the United States will learn from these lessons has yet to be seen, but Appy asserts that alternative courses of history are always available. And that's as important a message as any.

"History is a product of human agency," he writes, "not blind fate."

Jay Pawlowski is a free-lance writer living in Denver.