A Genius for War: A Life of General George S. Patton, by Carlo d'Este (HarperCollins, £9,99 in UK)

Old Blood and Guts was quite a complex character, not at all the mindless fire eater of the legend (enhanced by the film). Though born in California, Patton came of an old Virginian family and his grandfather, a colonel, had died fighting for the South. Patton was a great fighting general, but he was also a learned soldier, in fact something of a military scholar, and had a strong sense of history and, of course, his own place in it. The inter war years were a misery to him, but when he finally found himself in a real war (he had seen some fighting against Pancho Villa as a young officer) he was in his element. He was, however, no diplomatist and in the later years of the second World War he was often at odds with Eisenhower, his C-in-C, with his immediate superior Bradley, and with the patronising British generals, Alexander and Montgomery. Patton was sometimes a hero, sometimes in disgrace, but when he died as the result of a motor accident, he was largely burnt out and embittered, a man whose hour had come and gone. Even an extreme Patton enthusiast may think twice about going right through a book of nearly a thousand pages.