Making waves : stories from my life /

Alpert's autobiography offers a scientist's view of life in the Soviet Union. He was born in 1911 and left the Soviet Union in 1987 after years as a refusenik, so his personal history is congruent with most of the lifetime of the Soviet Union. The book is in roughly chronological order, with some excursions to treat certain areas in a unified way. Thus, in addition to chapters on Alpert's experiences as a refusenik, there is also a separate chapter on the prominent Soviet dissidents Sakharov, Orlov, and Sharansky, as well as a chapter on the author's encounters with the KGB. About a third of the book deals with the refusenik period. Alpert (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), himself a prominent physicist and expert on radio waves, also gives an excellent firsthand account of Soviet physics over a period of almost 50 years. A final chapter relates the author's experiences after leaving the Soviet Union; there are several valuable appendixes. This book rewards browsing and will be of great value to students and scholars interested in the history of the Soviet Union, Soviet physics, the Soviet space program, and the refusenik movement. General readers; undergraduates through faculty. M. C. Ogilvie; Washington University