<b><i>The Hard Crowd</i> is wild, wide-ranging and unsparingly intelligent throughout.</b>
Vogue
<b>One of America's most exciting writers</b> . . . <b>A brilliant collection of art and literary criticism, reportage, and autobiography.</b>
Daily Telegraph
<b>She writes as well as any writer alive</b> about the pleasure of a good motor doing what it was designed to do . . . <b>Cool and wise, with real power and control</b> . . . <b>This book has a real gallery of souls</b> . . . <b>As strong a statement about artistic purpose and sensibility as I've read in a while.</b>
- Dwight Garner, New York Times
<b>She seems to work with a muse and a nail gun, so surprisingly yet forcefully do her sentences pin reality to the page.</b>
- Kathryn Schulz, New York Magazine
<b>I honestly don't know how she is able to know so much</b> (about motorcycle racing, Italian radical politics) and convey all of it in such a<b> completely entertaining and mesmerizing</b> way.
- George Saunders,
<b>Kushner at her most freewheeling</b> . . . <b>Luminously beautiful </b>. . . 'The Hard Crowd', which closes the book, <b>allows us to see how Kushner has evolved over the twenty-year span of this collection.</b>
- Michael LaPointe, Times Literary Supplement
<b>New Journalism given a new lease of life</b> . . . <b>And then there's the frank pleasure of her sentences</b> . . . <b>I'm glad to taste something this sharp, this smart.</b>
- Olivia Laing, Observer
<b>She's going to be one we turn to for our serious pleasures and for the insight and wisdom we'll be needing in hard times to come.</b>
- Robert Stone,
<b>If you want to ride in a famous motorcycle race, then hang out with Keith Richards in 1990s San Francisco and finally consider the work of Marguerite Duras - and who wouldn't? - all you have to do is pick up this wide-ranging book of journalism.</b>
- Bethanne Patrick, Washington Post
<b>Rachel Kushner's wonderful new book <i>The Hard Crowd </i>is a personal favourite . . . It's an exhilarating, voracious collection.</b>
- Martin Colthorpe, Irish Times