Many of us remember the footsteps on the stairway at night, and the strained listening: have they come for me this time, or for my neighbor? Don't worry, they haven't come for you yet. They've come for Sakharov and for the others who refuse to be silent.

The story of his love for his second wife is a moving theme in the latter half of the book. Elena Bonner's dynamic and assertive personality strengthened his existing beliefs. She played a crucial role in his dissident activities and in smuggling the book itself to the West to be published.

His ironic sense of humor pervades the book. He writes that one man makes a poor woman's "life a fairy tale...but a grim one." He writes that "justice triumph--sometimes." Of the retired scientist who scrutinizes the Bible for evidence that the world has been visited by extraterrestrials, he writes, "To say I am skeptical would be putting it mildly."

In an interview included in the appendix, Sakharov says, "There is a need to create ideals even when you can't see any way to achieve them, because if there are no ideals then there can be no hope and then one would be left completely in the dark, in a hopeless blind alley."

During his years of internal exile in Gorky, the silence of his Soviet colleagues disappointed him. His powerful friends would have suffered no personal risk by publicly announcing their support for the man who so often put himself in danger for prisoners of conscience, but they remained silent anyway. Sakharov does not appear bitter at this desertion, but disappointed in the cowardice of his countrymen.

This is the story of a man who loses his innocence but faces the challenges with courage, and acts on his conscience and not his fear. His story, as told in the book, is a sprawling account with endless digressions. But like the countryside, where some of the most beautiful sights are found on the off-roads, here also some of the best material is contained in these tangents.

In an age in which the press proclaims there are no heroes left, citing athletes who take drugs, corrupt politicians, and the superficiality of pop figures created by publicity agents, the powerful figure of Sakharov exists as a promise that our time can still produce heroes. He stands as a prophet who preached of a more peaceful world to men who preferred war. With the barriers between political blocs just now tumbling, we are finally beginning to move on the path he cleared for the rest of us.