Book Review: "Distant War: Recollections of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia" By Marc Phillip Yablonka, 258 pages, published in 2009 by Merriam Press. For information on how to purchase a copy go to: merriam-press.com

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Time operates in unrelenting linear fashion. Days turn into weeks and then months and then years and then decades.

But time in memory obeys its own laws. Events that took place years or decades ago can have sharper focus than yesterday's dinner. The memory never lies. It's a compass that unwaveringly points to the important, the seminal. And in the case of Marc Phillip Yablonka's book, "Distant War: Recollections of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia," the instructive.

According to the standard measure of time, the Vietnam War ended a good 15 years before reporter turned author Marc Phillip Yablonka ever set foot in Saigon and a fractured land not so much healed as healed over.

But the truth for the real life characters in Yablonka's understated and revealing book is that many graying heads still feel the reach of that long gone war if not hear the echoing whump-whump-whump of Hueys dusting off or the metallic burst of automatic rifle fire.

Men of H Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, move along rice paddy dikes in pursuit of the Viet Cong. (Photo from the National Archives)

His is an eclectic collection of pieces, gleaned from multiple reporting trips overseas, that seemingly has no clear focus - at first. Stories about semi-rogues are placed next to heroes are placed next to legends are placed next to Pat Sajak?

It's as if Yablonka emptied out his notebook of stories like spilling out a utility drawer on to a bed sheet and said here. But the deeper one goes into the book, the more one sees the mosaic he has created.

To be sure, if you are looking for a definitive historical narrative of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, a tome that takes you step by step from President John Kennedy's first forays through President Lyndon Johnson's escalation to President Dick Nixon's last gambits, then look elsewhere. There are whole library shelves filled with those books.

What there aren't so many of -- and what is this work's strength - are books that eschew the policy decisions and the body counts for a more intimate, humane and likely honest portrait of the Vietnam War taken from perspectives ranging from journalists to doctors to former POWs.

Occasionally burdened by the factual minutia that journalists are susceptible to, Yablonka hits his stride when he lets his reporter's eye for the subtle and telling shine through. When he does, his stories achieve a kind of authoritative resonance that touches that of Michael Herr in "Dispatches" or something by Ward Just - two other former reporters.

These passages are sprinkled throughout the collection, sometimes even appearing in the brief preambles to the stories themselves.

In the forward to "Cambodia Revisited," he writes about walking in the "Killing Fields."

"There I walked on the hardened dirt from which protruded teeth and femurs dug out of the earth by a tour guide for my camera's benefit: Witnessing Buddhist stupas with skeletal remains rising 30 feet into the air..."

Journalism is incremental. It doesn't attempt to tell the big sweeping truths because it's not built for that. But it is exquisite at telling the personal truths, the equivalent of the tiny pieces of broken glass and tile that make up a unified whole.

Some of these truths have been forgotten and we owe it to Yablonka for reminding us of them. Some matter more than others, but all have their place.

For instance, it's a fact that a South Vietnamese Air Force plane dropped the napalm on the village of Trang Bang, South Vietnam on June 8, 1972 that resulted in the iconic shot of the naked little girl running down the road taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut.

To this day most Americans believe it was a U.S. aircraft. So did I until I read the story "Everything Is Okay Now."

Or the fact that the late Vice Adm. James Bond Stockdale -- who, unfortunately, is widely remembered as H. Ross Perot's stumbling vice-presidential candidate -- was a hero in the purest sense of the word.

But Yablonka's aim is not to shift blame or to appease or to provoke. It is simply to explain.

"Distant War" deserves to be read to fully understand the depth and the diversity of the U.S. experience in Vietnam.