Prisoner of Conscience.

Faith of My Fathers, by John McCain, with Mark Salter (Random House, 349 pp., $25)

On July 29, 1967, Navy flier John McCain was sitting in the cockpit of an A-4, on the deck of the U.S.S. Forrestal, when stray voltage somehow launched a Zuni rocket hung under the wing of another airplane. The Zuni hit the external fuel tank of McCain's A-4, which burst into flames.

When the fire started, the Forrestal was preparing to launch strikes against Vietnam. Its flight deck was crowded with planes loaded with bombs. Other ordnance was stored on the flight deck and below, in the hanger bay. The bombs, including those attached to McCain's plane, quickly began cooking off.

The ship was in peril. It burned for almost two days. Bombs shredded the flight deck. Burning fuel dropped through the holes into lower decks, spreading the fires.

The Forrestal survived, though badly crippled. One hundred and thirty-four men were killed, and the ship was put in the yards for more than two years. The damage would have been even more catastrophic had it not been for the heroism of men who fought the fires and were seen wading into the flames to lift bombs and manhandle them off the deck and into the sea.

To survivors of another war, the Forrestal no doubt resembled carriers with names like Bunker Hill, Randolph, and Hancock, which blazed in the bright Pacific after they were hit by Japanese bombs or kamikazes. Those ships had been part of Task Force 38, one of history's legendary naval formations, under the command of Vice Admiral John S. McCain, the unfortunate A-4 pilot's grandfather.

With the Forrestal out of action, its squadrons had no deck to fly from. Pilots from those squadrons had to be reassigned. They could, in short, go home. McCain had flown five combat missions-enough, that is, to have been disabused of any notions he may have had about easy glory in the air war over Vietnam. Still, he asked to be reassigned to the U.S.S. Oriskany and one of the hardest-flying A-4 squadrons in the Navy. After spending a brief leave in Europe with the woman he had recently married, he reported for duty. On October 26, 1967, he was shot down over Hanoi and taken prisoner. While he was a POW, his father-son of TF 38's commander-would assume command of all U.S. forces in the Pacific.

John McCain, of course, survived captivity to become a senator from Arizona and a Republican candidate for president. His story would have made good material for a book in any year. But coming this year-more than a quarter-century after McCain was repatriated from North Vietnam-Faith of My Fathers has to be considered a campaign book. Many books have been written about the Vietnam POW experience, and several POWs have told their individual stories in print. Many of those men were obscure personalities when compared with McCain. Because of his father's high rank, he was the one of the most celebrated prisoners held by the North Vietnamese, the subject of news stories, crude propaganda stunts, and several offers of early release. This celebrity status held up right until the end, when the North Vietnamese offered to hand McCain over personally to Henry Kissinger as a kind of trophy. Kissinger wisely refused the offer. If he had agreed, McCain-who was, in POW parlance, a "good resister"-certainly would have refused the offer.

But if Faith of My Fathers is a campaign book, does this mean that it is necessarily a bad book? A self-serving book? A suspect book? Actually, none of the above. It is, as they say, a good read, which even registered Democrats and just about anyone on the political spectrum right of Jane Fonda would find engaging, sometimes funny, and often profoundly moving. John McCain lived a colorful life as a Navy fighter pilot and admits as much. He tells of crashing airplanes and dating strippers, though he is discreet, almost prim, when it comes to the details.

As noted, McCain was one of the "good resisters" in the North Vietnamese prison camps. A man I once interviewed remembered him fondly for his ability to confound his captors and "get in their knickers." McCain endured the cruelties and brutalities that the Vietnamese routinely inflicted on their captives. He was beaten senseless. Locked in solitary. Hung on ropes. He was broken, at one point, and gave them what they wanted-propaganda. When he had recovered his strength, he went back to being a resister.

The son and grandson of admirals, McCain went into the Navy the same way other men go into the family business. His grandfather was Admiral William Halsey's friend and among his favorite subordinates. Sailed with him through the best and worst of the final days of the Navy war in the Pacific. Admiral McCain was with Halsey on the decks of the U.S.S. Missouri when the Japanese surrendered, and also when Halsey ran the fleet through a typhoon (he did this twice; he was a fighting admiral but not necessarily a prudent one).

John McCain's father was a submariner who commanded a boat that survived depth charges in one of those attacks that merely reading about sets off all one's claustrophobic alarms. Much later, he assumed the thankless post of commanding U.S. forces in the Pacific during the long winding-down of the Vietnam War. When Admiral McCain gave the order to send bombers over Hanoi, his son was in the target area, in a North Vietnamese prison camp. They were both doing their duty.

All this-the family stories, the naval history, the fighter-jock anecdotes, and the stoic bravery of the POWs-makes for a large, almost unwieldy, and sublimely American story. The book is compelling in spite of some literary flaws, especially a tendency to tell the reader what lesson to draw from a story that needs no interpretation.

But what about the really important question: What kind of campaign book is it? Well, it is hard to imagine that anyone who is inclined to vote for John McCain will change his mind after reading this book. Nobody is going to switch parties and vote for Al Gore when he learns that McCain's grandfather played the horses, that his father and mother eloped and got married in Tijuana (can you imagine?), or that the author himself once dated a stripper who called herself "The Flame of Florida." McCain may be the anti-Clinton, positive pole to the president's negative-but he was never a saint. He does, however, appear to have grown up.

He has also learned that there are things greater than himself and his own destiny. There is an honest modesty here, as opposed to the fake kind that is hard-wired into most authors of campaign books. If John McCain thinks himself a war hero-or any other kind-it surely doesn't come through in these pages.

He does consider himself a patriot. But of the authors of campaign books in general it could certainly be said, "Don't they all?" Well, yes. But if you are yourself a patriot and you find yourself stirred by stories of honest patriotism, then you will surely find Faith of My Fathers irresistible.

Liberal readers, meanwhile, will note with dismay that nothing much indicates that McCain grew up committed to diversity, women's liberation, a clean environment, gun control, or smoke-free restaurants. (He does admit to enjoying cigarettes while he was a guest of the North Vietnamese, so maybe he is trying to balance his support of last year's anti-tobacco bill.) He doesn't say a word about campaign finance or putting computers in every classroom. Probably never came up in the Oriskany's ready rooms or the prison camps.

Just about the only policy message evident here is that if the United States goes to war under President John McCain, then the enemy had better buckle his chin strap. The U.S. will fight to win, and no flier will be shot down on some niggling mission that the president has vetted for political sensitivity. But we knew this already, from McCain's stand on Kosovo. McCain and his father believed Lyndon Johnson's bombing strategy was flawed. It took a draft dodger from those Vietnam days to make a convincing, empirical demonstration that air power might just be capable of winning a war after all.

Which, perhaps, is to say that the country can stand just about anyone as president (and probably has) as long as it keeps producing men, and patriots, like McCain. Though he would probably argue that better men than he perished in the terrible Forrestal fire, the country is fortunate that he survived that day.

Mr. Norman, editor-at-large of Forbes FYI, is author of Bouncing Back, an account of the American POW experience in Vietnam.