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There are more books about Liverpool Football Club than about most countries, and a great many of them are the same cuttings-library history recycled with a new cover. The ones below are not that. They are the books that either tell you something the others do not, or tell it well enough that you would read them about a club you did not support.
A note on where to start. If you want the whole story in one volume, John Williams’s Red Men is the only serious single-narrative history and the right first purchase. If you came to the club through Jürgen Klopp, Raphael Honigstein’s biography explains the man rather than the trophies. If you want to understand why Anfield is the way it is, read Shankly in his own words and then read what Simon Hughes found in the boot room.
And one book on this list is not really a football book at all. Phil Scraton’s Hillsborough: The Truth is an account of the deaths of 97 supporters and of the institutional cover-up that followed, and it is the most important thing ever written about this club. It is also hard going. Read it when you are ready to, not because it is on a list.
Ten books, from the standard histories to the ones only obsessives know about.
| # | Product | Price | Where to buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Red Men: Liverpool Football Club, The Biography — John Williams | $18–$30 | Amazon · eBay |
| 2 | Gerrard: My Autobiography — Steven Gerrard | $12–$22 | Amazon · eBay |
| 3 | Carra: My Autobiography — Jamie Carragher | $12–$20 | Amazon · eBay |
| 4 | Shankly: My Story — Bill Shankly | $14–$30 | Amazon · eBay |
| 5 | Bring the Noise: The Jürgen Klopp Story — Raphael Honigstein | $14–$24 | Amazon · eBay |
| 6 | Hillsborough: The Truth — Phil Scraton | $16–$26 | Amazon · eBay |
| 7 | Secret Diary of a Liverpool Scout — Simon Hughes | $14–$24 | Amazon · eBay |
| 8 | Men in White Suits: Liverpool FC in the 1990s — Simon Hughes | $14–$22 | Amazon · eBay |
| 9 | Quiet Genius: Bob Paisley — Ian Herbert | $16–$26 | Amazon · eBay |
| 10 | Rafa: My Story — Rafael Benítez | $12–$22 | Amazon |
The picks, in detail
Red Men: Liverpool Football Club, The Biography — John Williams
The definitive single-volume history, and the first book to tell the club’s whole story as one continuous narrative rather than a decade-by-decade scrapbook. Williams is a Leicester sociologist as well as a lifelong Red, which shows in the best way — he is as interested in what the club meant to the city and to the men who built it as in the scorelines. If you buy one Liverpool history, it should be this.
- Complete club history from 1892 in a linear narrative
- Written by an academic sociologist and lifelong supporter
- Strong on the social and civic context, not just the football
- Around 500 pages in the standard paperback
- The only serious one-volume history of the whole club
- Genuinely well written rather than merely comprehensive
- Explains the why, not only the what
- Predates the Klopp era entirely
- Academic register will not suit everyone
- Long
Gerrard: My Autobiography — Steven Gerrard
The 2006 autobiography, written at the peak of his powers and much rawer than the 2015 follow-up. The Istanbul chapters are the obvious draw, but the book is better on the ordinary things — growing up in Huyton, the injuries, the season he came close to leaving for Chelsea and what that did to him. Later editions and the 2015 My Story cover more years but with the edges sanded off.
- Covers his rise through the academy to the 2005 European Cup
- First-person account of the Istanbul final
- Candid about the near-move to Chelsea
- Later My Story edition extends to his retirement
- The most honest of the modern player autobiographies
- Istanbul told from inside the dressing room
- Reads quickly
- Ghostwritten in a plain, functional style
- Two overlapping books with confusingly similar titles
- Stops well short of his final seasons in the original edition
Carra: My Autobiography — Jamie Carragher
Better written than most footballer memoirs and considerably more argumentative. Carragher grew up an Everton supporter, which gives him an outsider’s clarity about Liverpool as an institution, and he is unusually willing to name the things that went wrong — Houllier’s decline, the Hicks and Gillett years, his own limitations. The best book on this list about what it is actually like to be a professional footballer.
- Covers the Houllier and Benítez eras from inside the squad
- Frank on the Hicks and Gillett ownership period
- Written by a boyhood Evertonian turned Liverpool stalwart
- Strong on the technical side of defending
- Sharper and more opinionated than the genre norm
- Excellent on dressing-room politics
- Real insight into the craft of defending
- Settles a few scores at length
- Ends in 2008, well before his retirement
- Assumes you know the squads of the era
Shankly: My Story — Bill Shankly
The founding document. Shankly’s own account, in his own cadence, of taking a Second Division club with a crumbling ground and turning it into what Liverpool became. It is short, it is plain, and it is quotable on almost every page — and it explains the boot-room philosophy more clearly than any of the many books written about him since. Worth reading even if you support someone else.
- Shankly’s first-person account of his Liverpool years
- Covers the 1959 arrival and the rebuilding of the club
- Includes the origins of the boot room
- Short — comfortably read in a weekend
- Primary source rather than a retelling
- The voice is unmistakable and endlessly quotable
- Brief and readable
- Long out of print in some editions — availability varies
- Light on the final years and his difficult retirement
- Dated in tone, inevitably
Bring the Noise: The Jürgen Klopp Story — Raphael Honigstein
The definitive Klopp biography, and the one that makes sense of him because Honigstein covered his entire German career first. The Mainz and Dortmund chapters are the point — by the time he arrives at Anfield you understand exactly why the gegenpressing, the emotional management and the transfer policy all look the way they do. Later editions extend into the title and European Cup wins.
- Traces Klopp from Mainz through Dortmund to Anfield
- Written by a journalist who covered his whole German career
- Explains the tactical system rather than just describing it
- Updated editions cover the 2019 and 2020 trophies
- By far the best-sourced book on Klopp
- The German chapters are unavailable anywhere else in English
- Tactically literate without being dry
- Check which edition you are buying — coverage varies
- More about Klopp than about Liverpool
- Ends before his departure
Hillsborough: The Truth — Phil Scraton
Not a football book. Scraton, an academic who worked with the bereaved families for decades, documents what happened on 15 April 1989 and the institutional failure and falsification that followed. It was instrumental in forcing the second inquests and the eventual verdicts of unlawful killing. It is meticulous, furious and extremely difficult to read, and it is the most important book about this club that exists.
- Forensic account of the disaster and the subsequent inquiries
- Based on decades of work with the families and primary documents
- Updated editions cover the 2016 inquest verdicts
- Written by the academic who led the Independent Panel research
- The authoritative account, and the one that changed the outcome
- Rigorously sourced throughout
- Essential context for anything else about the club
- Genuinely distressing subject matter
- Dense and legalistic in places
- Not remotely a leisure read
Secret Diary of a Liverpool Scout — Simon Hughes
The book about Geoff Twentyman, the chief scout Shankly appointed in 1959, built around the notebooks he kept for twenty years. Twentyman found Hansen, Rush, Lawrenson and Clemence, and the diaries show the actual mechanics — who he watched, what he wrote, how long he tracked a player before recommending him. The best possible answer to how Liverpool kept replacing great sides with better ones.
- Built from Geoff Twentyman’s original scouting notebooks
- Covers the recruitment of Hansen, Rush, Lawrenson and others
- Explains the club’s scouting method in practical detail
- Includes contemporary interviews with the players found
- Genuinely original material, not recycled history
- Explains the sustained success better than any trophy account
- Fascinating even to non-Liverpool readers
- Narrow subject — no match narrative to speak of
- Assumes familiarity with 1970s and 1980s squads
- Harder to find than the mainstream titles
Men in White Suits: Liverpool FC in the 1990s — Simon Hughes
The Spice Boys decade, told through long interviews with the players who lived it. It is the most enjoyable book on this list — funny, indiscreet and unexpectedly sad, because it is fundamentally about a great club losing its way and a group of talented players who never quite worked out why. Hughes lets them talk, and they talk far more freely than they ever did at the time.
- Long-form interviews with the 1990s squad
- Covers the Souness and Evans eras
- Named for the notorious 1996 FA Cup final suits
- Part of Hughes’s Liverpool oral-history series
- The most entertaining read here by a distance
- Players are strikingly candid in hindsight
- Fills the decade most histories skip over
- Oral-history format means it jumps around
- Little tactical or institutional analysis
- Assumes you remember the era
Quiet Genius: Bob Paisley — Ian Herbert
The most-decorated manager in English football history has been oddly under-written, largely because Paisley himself was so determinedly unremarkable in public. Herbert’s biography is the corrective: it reconstructs a man who won three European Cups while actively disliking attention, and it is very good on how he handled the impossible job of following Shankly. Won a sports book of the year award and deserved it.
- Full biography of Liverpool’s most successful manager
- Covers the succession from Shankly in 1974
- Draws on family papers and extensive new interviews
- Award-winning sports writing
- Fills the biggest gap in the Liverpool bookshelf
- Genuinely fine writing, not just a trophy list
- Sympathetic without being hagiographic
- Slower going than the player memoirs
- Assumes some knowledge of the 1970s game
- Less dramatic material than a Shankly or Klopp book
Rafa: My Story — Rafael Benítez
The counterweight to the player memoirs, and the only book here written by a manager who fell out with the club’s owners in public. Benítez is methodical rather than lyrical, and the value is in exactly that — his account of preparing for Istanbul, of the transfer market under Hicks and Gillett, and of the 2008-09 title challenge is a manager explaining decisions rather than a personality telling anecdotes.
- Covers the 2004 to 2010 Benítez era
- First-hand account of the 2005 European Cup campaign
- Frank about the Hicks and Gillett ownership dispute
- Methodical, coach’s-eye perspective
- Rare managerial account of a modern Liverpool era
- Detailed on tactics and match preparation
- Useful counterpoint to Gerrard and Carragher on the same years
- Dry compared with the player books
- Understandably one-sided on the ownership dispute
- Less introspective than the best of the genre
Buying tips
- Start with Red Men if you want the whole story, and with Honigstein if you came to the club through Klopp. Those two cover the widest ground between them.
- Watch the editions on the player autobiographies. Gerrard has two overlapping books with similar titles, and several Klopp and Benítez titles have updated editions that cover very different end points.
- Simon Hughes has written a series of Liverpool oral histories — Secret Diary of a Liverpool Scout, Men in White Suits, Ring of Fire. If you like one, the others use the same method on adjacent eras.
- Hillsborough: The Truth is essential but genuinely distressing, and it is not a book to start with. The 2016 edition is the one that includes the inquest verdicts.
- Out-of-print Shankly and Paisley titles turn up cheaply second-hand, and older hardbacks are often in better condition than their age suggests. Check the used listings before paying new prices.
- For anything published before 2015, assume the Klopp era is absent entirely — even books with recent-looking covers are frequently unrevised reissues.
- Club-published photographic histories look attractive and repeat the same material. Buy them for the pictures, not for the text.
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