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Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides. By Christian G. Appy. New York: Viking, 2003. ISBN 0-670-03214-X. Maps. Index. Pp. xxvii, 574. $34.95.
Scholars of the Vietnam War (or, as the Vietnamese call it, the American War) know that Christian G. Appy's Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (1993) relied heavily on his interviews with approximately one hundred U.S. combat veterans and his participation in a veterans' rap group throughout much of the 1980s. Appy has now broadened his focus well beyond American veterans to produce a riveting oral history of the war that includes many-though not all-sides. The "voices" are almost exclusively American and Vietnamese, with no representation from other important participants such as the Chinese, Soviets, South Koreans, or Australians.
But what treasures among the American and Vietnamese "voices"!...