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Reading lists

Books to read if you love The Bear

Among The Thugs

Before Running with the Firm came Among the Thugs - the bestselling classic account of football violence in English football.

Superbly written ... darkly exhilarating ... a sort of rollercoaster chamber of horrors

Compelling, intelligent and fully engaged

[Buford] gatecrashes a social world that most of us have spent some portion of our lives avoiding and brings it to life on the page with a ferocious relish that only someone who was a foreigner to soccer could manage, or stomach

Buford's reportage is vivid and racy, dropping you in the thick of the madness with a Wolfe-like immediacy

The excellence of his writing takes the reader to the centre of the mob... His words have the fragmented accuracy of a hand-held television camera in a war zone

Possesses something of the quality of A Clockwork Orange

This is an absorbing read, and another winner from Buford, who writes so very, very well

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.

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

Bill Buford has been a writer and editor for the New Yorker since 1995. Before that he was the editor of Granta magazine for sixteen years and, in 1989, became the publisher of Granta Books. He is also the author of Heat and Among the Thugs. He was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, grew up in California, and was educated at UC Berkeley and Kings College, Cambridge, where he was awarded a Marshall Scholarship for his work on Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. He lives in New York City with his wife, Jessica Green, and their two sons.

___________________________ 
THE BESTSELLING ACCOUNT OF FOOTBALL VIOLENCE 
 
Welcome to the world of football thuggery. 
 
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. 
 
The beautiful game remains ugly. 
 
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, supremely chilling book about the experience, and the eerie allure, of crowd violence and football culture.

An Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-maker and Apprentice to a Butcher in Tuscany

Heat

'Heat is by far the funniest, most passionately felt and intensely flavoured piece of writing about food, its possibilities and its culture, you are likely to read' - Tim Adams, Observer

It's a brilliant book, a high-brow kitchen soap opera

I lingered over every sentence like a heavily truffled risotto

I have never read a funnier or more authentic account of the making of a serious cook. Give Mr Buford three stars

A dazzling and fun account of two magnificently mad years

With an endlessly inquisitive mind writes with great humour ... I suspect it might become a kitchen classic. It deserves to

Obsessive, compulsive, sometimes funny, sometimes scholarly and always carefully detailed... he presents the foul-mouthed energy of the kitchen, all fear and weirdness, in the flat, careful detail of a good New Yorker piece - but brilliantly timed and structured as you'd expect from an editor like Buford, to give life to all that fact

Heat is a book about obsession, written by a man in the grip of one. It is fuelled by food, but food is not its only subject - love, sex, comradeship and terror and pain are all part of the story too

Now and again a book comes along that deserves the massive hype that goes with it...this book is an incredible celebration of life, humour, passion and devotion to a cause

There are many fine books on food, but Buford's insane culinary enthusiasm has resulted in a work that is by some distance the best about life among the professionals

This book will make you hungry - hungry for a follow-up, hungry for good writing in general and, of course, hungry for lunch

Buford is an engaging and accomplished writer with a sharp eye for the telling detail, and his prose fairly crackles on the page...There's enough luscious description to keep avid foodies drooling and enough beady-eyed observation to deter all but the keenest wannabe chefs

Bill Buford is a staff writer and European correspondent for the New Yorker, where he was previously the fiction editor for eight years. He was the editor-in-chief for Granta magazine for sixteen years and was also the publisher of Granta Books. He is the author of Among the Thugs. He lives in New York City.

Bill Buford, an enthusiastic, if rather chaotic, home cook, was asked by the New Yorker to write a profile of Mario Batali, a Falstaffian figure of voracious appetites who runs one of New York's most successful three-star restaurants. Buford accepted the commission, on the condition Batali allow him to work in his kitchen, as his slave. 
 
He worked his way up to 'line cook' and then left New York to learn from the very teachers who had taught his teacher: preparing game with Marco Pierre White, making pasta in a hillside trattoria, finally becoming apprentice to a Dante-spouting butcher in Chianti. 
 
Heat is a marvellous hybrid: a memoir of Buford's kitchen adventures, the story of Batali's amazing rise to culinary fame, a dazzling behind-the-scenes look at a famous restaurant, and an illuminating exploration of why food matters. It is a book to delight in, and to savour.

Bill Buford

For a rip-roaring account of French food culture and the dos and don'ts of working in a kitchen, look no further.

Vogue *The Best Food Writing For Autumn 2020*

Hugely enjoyable... Buford's patience and composure are remarkable, his reportage illuminating.

This book may well be an even greater pleasure than its predecessor... Delightful, highly idiosyncratic.

Buford is excellent company - candid, self-deprecating and insatiably, omnivorously interested... [I] wolfed it down.

I adore Buford's enthusiasm, which is unstinting, endlessly curious and absolutist in the best sense.

Another rollicking, food-stuffed entertainment... Gourmets and gourmands will savour this.

A chomping, romping, savoury tour de force: by turns hilarious (often at his own expense); and seriously thought provoking about our relationship with cooking and appetite... You finish it stuffed and groggy with happy illumination but as with every great feast, wanting even more!

I admire this book enormously; it's a profound and intuitive work of immersive journalism.

By turns funny, intimate, insightful, and occasionally heartbreaking. It's a remarkable book, and even readers who don't know a sabayon from a Sabatier will find it endlessly rewarding.

A warm and funny and very delicious story about a man late in life falling in love with cooking... Buford [is] an energetic, exquisite writer.

One of the greatest writers of his generation... Bill's latest is required reading for anyone with a love of history, good eating, and masterful storytelling.

A welcome reminder of simpler times... Buford's writing is filled with humor and heart.

Buford has an inexhaustible zest for life; the book is a tour de force.

Pure pleasure. Masterfully written. If you care at all about food, about writing, about obsessive people with a sense of adventure, you have to read this book. It is, in a word, wonderful.

A book to drool for. Magnifique!

Fluidly readable... exhaustive and enlightening.

As reportage, it's as immersive as you could wish for. It's also hilarious and humbling

Adventures in French Cooking from the bestselling author of Heat

From the author of the widely acclaimed Heat, an exhilarating account of Bill Buford's adventures in the world of French cooking. 
 
'A romping, chomping, savoury tour de force... Hilarious' Simon Schama 
 
What does it take to master French cooking? This is the question that drives Bill Buford to abandon his perfectly happy life in New York City and (with his wife and three-year-old twin sons in tow) move to Lyon, the so-called gastronomic capital of France. 
 
But what was meant to be six months in a new city turns into a wild five-year odyssey. As Buford apprentices at Lyon's best boulangerie, studies at a legendary culinary school and cooks at a storied Michelin-starred restaurant, he discoveries the true grit, precision and passion of the French kitchen. 
 
'Hugely entertaining' Observer 
 
'Rollicking, food-stuffed entertainment... Gourmets and gourmands will savour this' Spectator

Bill Buford

Praise for Dirt

For a rip-roaring account of French food culture and the dos and don'ts of working in a kitchen, look no further.

Hugely enjoyable... Buford's patience and composure are remarkable, his reportage illuminating.

This book may well be an even greater pleasure than its predecessor... Delightful, highly idiosyncratic.

For a rip-roaring account of French food culture and the dos and don'ts of working in a kitchen, look no further.

Hugely enjoyable... Buford's patience and composure are remarkable, his reportage illuminating.

This book may well be an even greater pleasure than its predecessor... Delightful, highly idiosyncratic.

For a rip-roaring account of French food culture and the dos and don'ts of working in a kitchen, look no further.

Hugely enjoyable... Buford's patience and composure are remarkable, his reportage illuminating.

This book may well be an even greater pleasure than its predecessor... Delightful, highly idiosyncratic.

Books by Bill Buford

Articles featuring Bill Buford

Books to read if you love The Bear

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