Rating: 
Summary: Rude, Brittania
Review: Bill Buford, a naive American adrift in England, tackles a very dicey subject: Mob violence by English football fans. He starts out innocently enough, trying to find the allure, cause, nature, basis, and form of England's notorious football hooligans, but soon has difficulty separating himself from his subject matter.As he relates his journey into the world of the yobs, we get a vivid picture of the people and the events, but no real glimpse into what is behind the football mob violence -- even after Buford spends most of the second half of the book trying to work it out. The only real insight were provided is that the mob becomes greater than the sum of its parts, and that there is a line where a person within the mob ceases to be an individual, and becomes a compnent of a greater organism. However, questions such as why sporting crowds in the US, Canada, or other countries never reach the level of violence or mob mentality as seen in England are never addressed, nor are questions of why this sort of violent behavior seems to be limited to a very large degree to football (soccer) crowds. Of course, that subject is beyond the scope of any one book. Still, the snapshot into the seedy world of NF members, jingoistic supporters, drunks and felons provided by Buford is entertaining, in a voyeuristic sort of way. Besides, unless you are intimately familiar with crowds at English, or any European, football matches, Buford's book is best if taken as a sort of superficial sociological travelogue, offering a glimpse into a strange land, complete with foreign customs, traditions, uniforms and etiquette. Reading 'Thugs' won't provide too much enlightentment on sports violence or the psychology of mobs, but it will entertain. And with the coming Euro2000 tournament, reading this may prove timely, as well.
Rating:
Summary: The Other Football
Review: Bill Buford uses two different ways to tell the tale of the English football supporter. Buford's first method, used in the beginning and end parts of the book, provide a view from the inside as the author documents his the part of his life spent, for lack of an original phrase, "among the thugs," specifically with supporters of Manchester United, one of the top teams in England's Premier League. Buford paints a harrowing picture as he describes people who are basically degenerates. Much like people used to fight in support of their country (does anyone really do that anymore?), the supporters use violence, much of it simply appaling, as their vehicle for team support. Buford's second technique, employed in the middle section, uses a more scholarly approach as the author relates the supporters' behavior to the tenets of modern sociology, especially those that deal with the dynamics of the group or the crowd. Although possessing a thoroughly interesting subject, especially for Americans whose sports are comparitively homoginized in the face of such thuggery, Buford's somewhat schitzophrenic approach takes away from the novel as a whole. When Buford immerses himself in the thug life, the reader immerses himself, too, thus providing for entertaining and slightly voyeuristic literature. Buford's sociology lesson is boring and repetitive, however, and the incompatible narrative methods keep the book from attaining its full depth. In all, Buford presents an flawed yet interesting tale about a subject to which few Americans can relate.
Rating:
Summary: Good Social Commentary
Review: I thought this book would simply be a blow-by-blow recitation of the crimes and violence perpetrated by Britain's soccer "hooligans." I was very pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be much, much more. Mr. Buford gives a very nice discussion of the crowd mentality and explains from a first-hand perspective how quickly a large event can turn violent. He also does a nice job of explaining how the social environment in Britain led to the conditions that allowed large number of disaffected young men with few other outlets for their frustrations than Saturday games and riots.
Rating:
Summary: The View From Inside the Mob
Review: Bill Buford is now fiction editor for The New Yorker. But for many years he lived in Cambridge, England, where he revived the literary quarterly Granta and brought it to prominence. While residing in Britain, he became fascinated with soccer hooligans, who visited a dreadful wave of violence on cities all over Europe in the 1980s. There's much to commend Buford's book. The portraits of the people he comes to know are pointed, vivid, and well rounded. He's particularly able as a narrator of violence, carrying the reader along for page after page of his accounts of riots forming and then "coming off." Much of what's interesting about the book is Buford's account of his own recognition of the inner thug, so to speak. When he begins his story, Buford is full of smug generalities and facile answers. He's sure he knows who the thugs are -- young, unemployed, uneducated yobs -- and why they're wild in the streets -- social protest. Then he begins to meet some of them and enter their social sphere, and realizes he's wrong. Many of them are older than he'd thought, family men with children and decent jobs. They're not protesting anything -- they're fighting because it's fun. And as he gains acceptance among them, Buford realizes that he, too, feels an atavistic thrill when the combat begins. English readers have suggested that Buford may have been taken in a few times by Brits having some fun with a gullible Yank. That might well be, but most of the book is an eyewitness account. Compelling reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Football violence, just crowd culture ?
Review: It was Bill Shankly, ex Liverpool manager, who said "Football is'nt a matter of life and death, it's more important than that". This book goes someway to capture the passion and importance of Football in English culture, and the extreme lengths that some so called supporters go to feel that they belong. As a true English Football supporter, I felt somewhat annoyed that readers of the book from other countries would feel that all English Football supporters behave in this manner, this is NOT true. But this book does accurately portray the minority who caused and still cause the atrocities described. The book works on two levels, to shock with horrific stories of brutal violence, and at a much deeper level to explain crowd behaviour and how this can be manipulated. Overall this is a valiant attempt by an American to explain English Football violence, which to my suprise was successfull.
Rating:
Summary: Good Social Commentary
Review: I thought this book would simply be a blow-by-blow recitation of the crimes and violence perpetrated by Britain's soccer "hooligans." I was very pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be much, much more. Mr. Buford gives a very nice discussion of the crowd mentality and explains from a first-hand perspective how quickly a large event can turn violent. He also does a nice job of explaining how the social environment in Britain led to the conditions that allowed large number of disaffected young men with few other outlets for their frustrations than Saturday games and riots.
Rating: 
Summary: Being a Thug
Review: Very interesting, if a little unfocused, book. I recall the 1980s when English fans seem to be the rampage when ever they leave the country. One of the benfits of football becoming more upmarket is that most of this violence is now just history.
The book starts great, but towards the end it becomes repetive and I had less and less interest in the characters.
While not the sociological explanation for the fan violence, it does at times give us a sense of atmosphere in the bars and stadioms, and especially in the streets.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent primer
Review: It seems to happen every year. We are presented with stories of violence from across the Atlantic as large groups of football "supporters" clash with each other on game day, ferociously fighting each other in an apparent attempt to proclaim their team superior. But aside from what we are shown on television - young men, rioting, destroying property, beating each other senseless - we know very little about what makes it all happen.
Bill Buford has attempted to answer this question in "Among the Thugs."
What he has produced is an excellent account of what takes place on the weekends during football season. Buford has gone to great lengths to make this book as informative, detailed, and objective as possible. He touches on everything, from the semi-organized structure of each group of "supporters," to the rituals they partake in prior to the beginning of the game, and even the famed terraces of the football ground. Included among the accounts of the violence are Bill Bufords own analysis of the "lads" he encounters, the dynamic of large groups, and what causes groups to become violent in the first place. Coupled with great narration and sarcastic humor, this book makes for a great read.
There is, however, one drawback. Mr. Buford does not spend much time on why exactly these "supporters" engage in violence. He offers a few suggestions - social protest, dangerous nationalism, among others - but eventually concludes that it is simply due to boredom, a conclusion that leaves one with a sense that they haven't been told everything.
It is this reason alone that I suggest that this book as an excellent primer for those interested in football violence. It's certainly not an exploration of generalized crowd violence, but I do not think that it is meant to be. Overall, this is a good book.
Rating:
Summary: More than soccer hooligans; a discussion of violence
Review: Although Buford concentrates on the frighteningly brutal antics of British "soccer hooligans," his book ventures into something deeper, societal violence. It seems that Buford uses the British soccer scene as his own private laboratory in which to study violence and crowd behavior. He attempts to discover the meaning and reasoning behind the escapades of these young men by studying them as individuals, then as societal groups, and finally, as a mass of humanity that evolves into an unrelenting mob certain to cause unprovoked violence. Buford attempted to infiltrate these groups in order to gather a better understanding of these young men as individuals. He learned that most are uneducated and unemployed, and if employed, usually in menial, low-paying jobs. They are the dregs of society, without much hope of improving their station. This theme was continuous throughout the work, be it in reference to "soccer hooligans," or skinhead fascists. By coming together in a loosely organized fashion, with a common rallying point, these men find their niche. They are no longer pariahs, but rather one powerful body. Then, this powerful body feels the need to exercise its new found strengths. It exercises its vengeance upon the same humanity that banished them from a respectable place. Buford offered no answers the problems of societal violence, but did provide some reasons. Throughout the work he makes reference to class struggle and the discrepancies between rich and poor. No work, and no opportunity leads to a stressful situation. A boiling point appears and the pressure must be relieved. For many of the younger generation, the pressure is relived in random street violence under the guise of European football rivalries.
Rating:
Summary: Skeptical
Review: Bill Buford's book makes for an interesting read, no doubt. And kudos go to whoever designed the cover jacket. That picture has no doubt sold thousands of additional copies over the years. But I will admit to reading these tales with a healthy bit of skepticism. An American-born and bred editor of a sober literary journal gaining access to the very heart of these groups? It stretches the imagination. I have to take Buford at his word, but I read the book with a very arched eyebrow. Especially the parts where he gets carried away by the goings-on and partakes in some violence himself. I laughed at that point; surely, not the reaction the author intended.
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