This is a stunning book. It is history but reads like a "can't put it down" novel - hardly surprising considering it grippingly features the two greatest motor cyclists of all time, Mike Hailwood and Valentino Rossi. Rick Broadbent tells the enthralling story of a thrilling and dangerous sport like never before and it had me by the throat

It was an odd decision to alternate a celebration of the brilliance of Valentino Rossi, today's Italian motorcycling superstar, with a reconstruction of episodes from the life and times of Mike Hailwood, the biking ace of the 1960s and 1970s, but it succeeds brilliantly. The technology is quite different, and so are the rewards, but the requirements of a true racer - courage and skill - are unchanging. In this hymn of praise to those who live closest to the edge, you can smell the grease and burning rubber

Peppered with anecdotes and insight... a fantastic, page turning read which presents a window into the personalities which are normally only seen on the track or in a press conference

A fantastic new book... well worth getting

Impressive

Extraordinary... Rick Broadbent's ability to sweep you along at speeds of 200 mph leaves you quite breathless... a very satisfying and enthralling read

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