Among the Thugs

I'd forgotten about this one. It's hilarious, in a grim kind of way, which is how hilarious should be. Expat American infiltrates the notorious English football hooligan sub-culture of the late 80s/early 90s, you may remember those horrible violent yobs. These were hard nuts like the Inter-City Firm......more

An absolutely bonkers tale, equally brutal and fascinating, of Bill Buford's attempt to embed himself within the English soccer hooligan scene. I mean, these goons make NFL fans look like a group of tepid HR department reps who tuck their sleeveless button-ups into their underwear. Buford tracks the......more

A stunning work of non-fiction, Among the Thugs chronicles Buford's attempts to understand the English phenomenon of soccer hooliganism by immersing himself into its characters, events, and lifestyles. He starts as an outsider, an American living in London for many years without ever attending a soc......more

This is such a great book- the fruits of years of ethnographic research. Every few years, an incident happens in English football which makes people question the culture- is it racist, violent etc. This book describes a time that was on a whole different order of magnitude. The level of tribalism, a......more

Note: This is a truncated review due to character limitations. For the full review, please see this link There are two kinds of violence in Among the Thugs. The first is the violence we, the reading and civilized public, are supposed to abhor: violence perpetrated by the football (soccer) hooligans. Th......more