Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. Yet rudeness is one thing and brutal, rib-cracking, skull-crushing violence is another. (most were shaved on top) and holding themselves Prime members enjoy FREE Delivery and exclusive access to movies, TV shows, music, Kindle e-books, Twitch Prime, and more. Plus a free monthly audiobook chosen by our editors, After 30 days, Audible is $16.45/month. . Everyone was there for the match and the drink and the laugh, and even if the blokes were a little rowdy at times, especially when they traveled to the foreigner's place, as Buford did with a number of Manchester United supporters to a 1984 Cup-Winners Cup match against Juventus in Turin, they claimed again that they meant well. Bill Buford follows a firm of young football fans as they travel around the world to follow their team, Manchester United. By this point in Buford's immersion, he clearly understands the structure of Football Saturday and the devotees of the clubs. The others followed, running on top of the man on the ground, sometimes slowing down to kick him-the head, the spine, the ass, the ribs, anywhere.". In order to navigate out of this carousel, please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. The husband, in a panic, is somehow able to get his wife and children in their car before he is set upon, struck across the face by a metal bar. Take the moment when Buford meets Mick, a “repellent specimen” with “a fat, flat bulldog face” and “puffy, doughy arms” who would first bring him into the hooligan fold: I introduced myself. Everyone's got it in them. I was writing about football supporters. No black or Paki had ever had a drink at the Green Man. Part of HuffPost News. This bar-code number lets you verify that you're getting exactly the right version or edition of a book. They have names like Barmy Bernie, Daft Donald, and Steamin' Sammy. Steve's counterparts in America, gang members, have no such scruples; indeed, they prefer guns to knives. Please try again. Cancel anytime. But it has to come out. The rationality of the structures and ideologies behind religious violence, which can be so easily identified when we widen our contextual lenses, only make the mystery of the irrationality deeper. Among the Thugs is the terrifying, definitive account of football hooliganism, a hall of fame sports book but also a paragon of immersive journalism. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. And it is this 'fish out of water' factor which makes Among the Thugs … Yet there is something deeply wrong when the kind of violence the thugs commit is needed to justify and keep the devotion together, to make it stronger, to make it something real and meaningful. An abbreviated version of this review appeared in November 2, 1992, issue of National Review. -- Newsweek, Like Michael Herr or Ryszard Kapuscinski, Buford has witnessed events which can only be compared in intensity to those of a war...an unflinching look into the festering soul of England...a fuckin' great read." Their dislike encompasses the rest of the known universe, and England's soccer thugs express it in ways that range from mere vandalism to riots that terrorize entire cities. The mystery of religious violence which tortures us stands against the rational structures and ideologies which support it. Use the Amazon App to scan ISBNs and compare prices. And it is this 'fish out of water' factor which makes Among the Thugs … There is something inherently spiritual in such common cause. Unable to add item to Wish List. Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Buford's own reporting provides an answer: "What was it like for me? What sort of man spends his Saturday afternoons with people named Bonehead, Paraffin Pete and Steamin' Sammy? 1-Click ordering is not available for this item. Unlike Falstaff, however, they are inarticulate. The way they danced was intensely physical: they Among the Thugs: The Experience, and the Seduction, of Crowd Violence is a 1990 work of journalism by American writer Bill Buford documenting football hooliganism in the United Kingdom. And let me warn the squeamish reader: Skip over Page 239. . The deeper Buford gets into the crowd of the thugs, the more clear and the less clear it becomes. Mark Juergensmeyer, in his erudite and prophetic 2000 tome Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, writes that "it takes a community of support and, in many cases, a large organizational network for an act of terrorism to succeed. As others have stated what makes this book stand out is that it is written from a neutral perspective. The threshold is crossed. Unable to add item to List. I don't think he understood the implications; I don't think he would have acknowledged them as valid.".