My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Lloyd (Anchor, £6.99 in UK)

It has become almost fashionable for correspondents to parade the fact that reporting on war and violence is addictive. It is hardly a new thesis - after all, for centuries people have known that danger is an intoxicant, which is why soldiers so easily get bored in peacetime. And gore, dead bodies and the rest have a well-known, though morbid, attraction. Anthony Lloyd served in the British army in Northern Ireland before becoming a Times correspondent and covering warfare in Bosnia (where he lived for a time), Chechnya, Afghanistan and Kosovo. His accounts of the Balkan fighting, in particular, confirm its grimness and the oafishness and viciousness common on all sides of the conflict. He has written a vivid book, but the parade of personal conscience is the least convincing - and least interesting - part.