The beautiful game remains ugly.

They have names like Bonehead, Paraffin Pete and Steamin' Sammy. They like lager, football, the Queen, and themselves. They love England. They dislike the rest of the known universe.

Welcome to the world of football thugery.

From following Manchster's Red Army to drinking with Skinheads, acclaimed writer Bill Buford enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of Hunter S. Thompson.

Among the Thugs is a terrifying, malevolently funny, supremly chilling book about the experience, and the eerie allure, of crowd violence.