Description

What sort of man spends his Saturday afternoons with people named Bonehead, Paraffin Pete and Steamin’ Sammy? Bill Buford’s acclaimed Among the Thugs is a book about the experience, and the attractions, of crowd violence.

Publisher Review

"Buford's reportage is vivid and racy, dropping you in the thick of the madness with a Wolfe-like immediacy" * Daily Telegraph * "The excellence of his writing takes the reader to the centre of the mob... His words have the fragmented accuracy of a hand-held television camera in a war zone" -- John Stalker * Sunday Times * "Possesses something of the quality of A Clockwork Orange" * The Times * "This is an absorbing read, and another winner from Buford, who writes so very, very well" * Buzzfeed * "Sizzling writing to rival the best of white-heat gonzo journalism" * New Statesman * "An extraordinary and powerful cautionary cry." * Kirkus * "Brilliant. . . one of the most unnerving books you will ever read" * Newsweek * "Buford creates with the majesty of a Tom Wolfe the ultimate price paid by so many for this footballing fever - the Hillsborough disaster, recalled with electrifying eloquence and power" * Time Out * "[Buford] gtecrashes a social world that most of us have spent some portion of our lives avoiding and brings it to life on the page with a ferocious relish that only someone who was a foreigner to football could manage, or stomach" * Jonathan Raban * "A grotesque, horrifying, repellent and gorgeous book; A Clockwork Orange come to life." * John Gregory Dunne * "A very readable, often funny, book." * The Economist * "His prose is tough and vivid" * ID * "Buford's book is important in that it offers a far more compelling explanation for the football violence than any offered by the pundits of Left and Right . . . Had Buford's account been written by a tabloid reporter or an academic sociologist it might be more easily dismissed. That is comes from a highly intelligent observer, and a neutral outsider with no axe to grind, makes his book all the more powerful and yet troubling." * Michael Crick, Independent *