Excellent ... compulsive reading...redresses the balance with considerable literary style and panache.

Don't be surprised if you fall in love with Max Leonard's book. A glorious celebration of coming last.

Thoughtful, properly researched and consistently entertaining

[A] lively account of largely forgotten men... It’s not easy to come up with an original angle on Le Tour, but with this rear view Leonard has managed the feat in style

Brilliant... The stories of the lanternes rouges that Leonard picks out have real value, because the race's rear view can tell you much more than the angle we're all familiar with

Makes for oddly inspiring reading. There is an art to losing

An elegant book... Surprising and illuminating

This is a valuable book with some great stories. Deeply-researched and well-written, it’s an enjoyable read that shouldn’t be rushed

Fascinating… Without losers, there are no winners

Thoughtful, witty

In this lively, rear-view account of largely unsung heroes, and a few villains, Leonard has managed the difficult feat of coming up with an original angle on Le Tour

Leonard extracts the dignity that sometimes exists in sporting failure; this is not the world of Armstrong, Keane or Pietersen and all the more appealing because of that

Celebratory and hilarious in equal measures, The Last Man revels in the travails of the underdog

This book does a great job of revealing some of the less well known stories from le Tour: well written, entertaining, and informative

This book is an entertaining account taking in everyone from stage winners and former yellow jerseys who couldn’t hang on, to a breakaway leader who stopped for a bottle of wine and then took a wrong turn, to a doper whose drug cocktail backfired

We know the winners of the Tour de France, but Lanterne Rouge tells the forgotten, often inspirational and occasionally absurd stories of the last-placed rider