Sympathetic and perceptive. Times have changed but the myth lives on

The Italian star's rivalry with Gino Bartali makes Armstrong v Contador look like a playground spat

Admirable. Coppi's melancholy journey from poverty to superstardom is a cautionary tale of the price of fame

The quality of the testimony and the sources used by Fotheringham are of a remarkable breadth and depth. An excellent book

Fotheringham is at his best when describing the emergence of a new national hero from a world of rubble and grinding poverty

A fantastic study of Coppi's life and achievements ... Everything you need or want to know about Fausto is in this book

Fascinating... This is not your average motorcycle book, it almost reads like a novel, but it is history, it is fact written by someone who has been close to and part of it. Because of the style it is one of those books you cannot put down and a must for every racing fan

Throws a whole new light on the disaster

Among the Thugs is, by some distance, the best book ever written about football violence. Intelligent, succinct, and always in the thick of it, it reads as a blood-fuelled ode to English football, and as a primer for what will be when Russia hosts the World Cup. It grabs the readers attention like a headbutt to the cakehole.

Sizzling writing to rival the best of white-heat gonzo journalism

An extraordinary and powerful cautionary cry.

Brilliant. . . one of the most unnerving books you will ever read

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

A grotesque, horrifying, repellent and gorgeous book; A Clockwork Orange come to life.

A very readable, often funny, book.

His prose is tough and vivid

Buford pushes the possibilities of participatory journalism to a disturbing degree . . . Among the Thugs does severe damage to the conventional wisdom that England and Europe are bastions of civilization.

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.

Buford’s accounts of the thugs he moved with are by turns amazing, repugnant, stunning, horrid and exhilarating.

The defining book on England’s hooliganism