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Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream | 
 enlarge | Author: H.g. Bissinger
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  283 reviews
Sales Rank: 6167
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0306809907
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3326209764862
EAN: 9780306809903
ASIN: 0306809907
Publication Date: July 2000
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Secular religions are fascinating in the devotion and zealousness they breed, and in Texas, high school football has its own rabid hold over the faithful. H.G. Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, enters into the spirit of one of its most fervent shrines: Odessa, a city in decline in the desert of West Texas, where the Permian High School Panthers have managed to compile the winningest record in state annals. Indeed, as this breathtaking examination of the town, the team, its coaches, and its young players chronicles, the team, for better and for worse, is the town; the communal health and self-image of the latter is directly linked to the on-field success of the former. The 1988 season, the one Friday Night Lights recounts, was not one of the Panthers' best. The game's effect on the community--and the players--was explosive. Written with great style and passion, Friday Night Lights offers an American snapshot in deep focus; the picture is not always pretty, but the image is hard to forget.
Product Description
Return once again to the timeless account of the Permian Panthers of Odessa--the winningest high-school football team in Texas history. Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going. Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the oil business. In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true. With frankness and compassion, H. G. Bissinger chronicles a season in the life of Odessa and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires--and sometimes shatters--the teenagers who wear the Panthers' uniforms.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 278 more reviews...
 Not sure what was worse June 4, 2008
Not sure what was worse, reading this 'item' or pounding my head against a concrete wall. It has received much fan-fare, and I don't know why, it's best described as...trite.
 Friday Night Lights April 18, 2008
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Friday Night Lights
A Town, A Team, and A Dream
By H.G. Bissinger
By Cael Kiess
H.G. Bissinger spent over a year getting to know the people of Odessa, Texas. During that year he spoke with Permian football players, their families, and Odessa citizens in his attempt to write a book that told the story of how one team of teenage kids could inspire an entire town. Bissinger, an American journalist, has won the Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the National Headliner Award, and the American Bar Association's Silver gavel for his reporting. He is also the author of A Prayer for the City, and is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Bissinger did a great job accomplishing his goal of reliving the wild journey of the 1988 Permian football season and the struggles off the field. He vividly portrays the racism through schools in Odessa County, the oil booms, typical school days of Permian football players, the Mojo Fanatics, and Friday Nights in late August. One chapter, "The Watermelon Feed," really describes the passion and devotion of Permian football fans and Mojo Fanatics. Bissinger writes, "The faithful sat on little stools of orange and blue under the lights of the high school cafeteria, but the setting didn't bother them a bit. Had the Watermelon Feed been held inside a county jail, or on a sinking ship, or on the side of a craggy mountain, they would still have flocked to attend and support their team." This description allows me to feel like I'm actually there and helps me sense the amount of pride and dedication given to Permian football by the fans. He also gives a second look farther into the town of Odessa, off the football field, enhancing a better view of what was occurring in the town of Odessa and its neighboring towns. There were many highlights and struggles happening in the streets and classrooms that one would not be able to find out in just the movie. One weakness of the book is the possible effect of losing the reader through the ongoing descriptions and passages of events, people, and struggles in Odessa. There is not as much of the actual football games incorporated into the book as one would think from watching the movie. In the book, Bissinger does a marvelous job describing the life and events of the 1988 Permian football players and the Mojo fans.
 Focus on football, not personal opinions March 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is good, but not great. Listening to the rants and raves of Bissinger's politics is painful, but it can be battled through if you're patient.
I was excited to read this book, to learn about the lives and the environment of football in a completely different context than the rest of us can witness. The excitement quickly dwindled as the author lost track of the actual story, and puts his own "journalistic" spin on the entire story. In the epilogue Bissinger claims that he had to report what he saw, as he had to be the responsible journalist, and from his writing it is clear that he is a typical, one side of the story journalist. Normally, I wouldn't let his clear bias affect the quality of the football story, but it became impossible to ignore, after chapter after chapter of clearly one-sided views of western Texas.
He openly mocks the fervor that the Odessa area has for George H. Bush page after page, who was running for President during this time. He makes fun of the lack of Democrats, the Texas religious beliefs, and the conservative values as if it's a complete crime that Texas supports one of its own. He doesn't even mention that Bush lived in Midland until halfway through the book, after chapters of mockery.
His view on the oil industry is completely laughable. Again, he mocks western Texas for being so foolish as to support Ronald Regan, who acted as a villain to western Texas by - ready for this - lowering oil prices. Bissinger thinks that lowering oil prices is a travesty that deserves the harshest of penalty, and that Texans are gullible for believing in the free market. If George Bush acted this way, would he be treated the same today? I wonder what Bissenger's attitude toward lowering oil prices would be now?
The football aspect is done well, with the lives of the football players, how much Permian football means to them, and the troubled and sometimes tragic life in Odessa, Texas.
 Book provides "Hoop-Dreams" insights for the gridiron set February 22, 2008
Bissinger, the author, came to Odessa to follow the Permian Panthers thru their entire 1988 season, attending practices as well as games, spending time with several of the key players and their families, reading the newspapers, interviewing the movers and shakers in the desolate, tapped-out landscape in the middle of Nowhere, Texas.
Most of us have heard that Texans regard their high school football with the reverence of a born-again religion--remember the story about the mother of a cheerleader who sought to have her daughter's rival on the cheerleading squad wasted? As a one-time resident and frequent soul mate, I can vouch for its high-school football mania, in East Texas as well as in West.
...
For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]
Brian Wright
Copyright 2008
Well-written, but flawed, look at Texas high school football February 19, 2008
First, let me say I've enjoyed "Friday Night Lights." Mr. Bissinger is a talented writer, and this is a very interesting take on football at a large Texas high school (although there's a lot of sociological analyses of the city and people of Odessa). I do recommend it.
This is a good read that shows the effects of overblown boosterism towards high school sports. I'm not sure the case of the Permian Panthers is entirely realistic because they are an extreme case used to illustrate Mr. Bissinger's overall point (this is not some backwoods small school prep team as in "Eagle Blue" or "Counting Coups," which I consider better books), but there's enough reality that you'll recognize the athletes, cheerleaders, coaches and boosters from your own high school days.
Mr. Bissinger is not shy about putting his personal politics on center stage at various points, so be prepared for your share of conservative bashing. This is not to say I disagree with all his points, but I don't need simplistic knee-jerk reactions from either Democrats or Republicans to complex social problems that require more than a one-sided approach, including books about prep sports. Just be aware of its presence.
I can understand why so many people in Odessa had such a virulent reaction to "Friday Night Lights," but there's truth to what Bissinger wrote about turning teenagers into throwaway heroes. It makes no sense to blame the mirror for what is reflected.
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