Paperbacks reviewed by William Leith

O Louis by Hugo Borst (Yellow Jersey, £9.99)

Hugo Borst, who is Dutch, is a very unusual kind of football writer. In a good way. Here, he takes on the subject of Louis van Gaal, the huge character who is now Man United’s manager. The book is constructed from all sorts of angles — lots of snapshots. Borst gets to know van Gaal over the years and builds up a detailed picture. When Louis was naughty as a child, “He would climb the stairs, enter his sick father’s bedroom, lie across him, and undergo his punishment, a couple of almighty slaps on the backside”. As a player, he was visionary but slow. He clashed with his manager at Sparta Rotterdam because he wanted to be in control. A lively study of a potent force in football.

Snake Dance by Patrick Marnham (Vintage, £9.99)

When he wrote this book, Patrick Marnham was compared to Bruce Chatwin, and I can see why. Marnham goes to Africa, the United States and Japan and writes about these places with an exceptionally sharp eye. But there’s more to this book than just great travel writing. These places were crucial in the making of the atomic bomb. The materials for the bomb were extracted from the Congo. It was tested in New Mexico. Then it was dropped, twice, in Japan. Marnham cleverly invokes Joseph Conrad and gives us a great picture of Robert Oppenheimer, the bomb’s prime inventor.