Paperback reviewed by William Leith

American Sniper by Chris Kyle (HarperCollins, £7.99)

A lot of books about war are by people who see themselves as ordinary guys who became warriors for a while, and are now trying to be ordinary guys again. This one, now also an Oscar-nominated film by Clint Eastwood, is different. Kyle is hardcore and unrepentant. A Navy SEAL (which stands for “Sea, Air and Land”), he felt entitled to kill and officially killed 155 people. “The number is not important to me. I only wish I had killed more,” he tells us. “The first time you shoot someone, you get a little nervous...But after you kill your enemy, you see it’s okay. You say great.” A valuable insight into the mind of a licensed killer who was himself killed, away from war, by another soldier.

Blood Horses by John Jeremiah Sullivan (Yellow Jersey, £9.99)

This memoir begins in hospital. The author, John Jeremiah Sullivan, is visiting his father, Mike, after a heart bypass. Mike is a sports writer. He’s 55. Lying there, in his hospital bed, he tells his son the best memory of his career so far. Was it watching Muhammad Ali? Or Michael Jordan? Or John McEnroe? No — it was the moment Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby in 1973. “That was the last time I saw him alive,” the author tells us. What follows is poignant — a son trying to remember, and understand, his father through the latter’s love of horses. It’s a good father-son memoir, and a good book about horses, too.

Great Railway Maps of the World by Mark Ovenden (Penguin, £14.99)

At first, you wonder what a book of railway maps could possibly do for you. Then you open this book. It has a mesmeric quality. You find yourself looking at it for ages. True, some of the maps are beautiful. And some, such as Harry Beck’s famous Tube map from the 1930s, are design classics. But you can learn a lot from this book, too. Just look at a rail map of the world. Western Europe and the eastern part of the United states are dense with tracks. India and the southern tip of Africa are covered with what look like spider’s webs. There is a dark patch in South America, which turns out to be Argentina. A real surprise, this book.