Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (1990)

by Buzz Bissinger

Members	Reviews	Popularity	Average rating	Mentions
2,856	72	4,958	(4.03)	61
Sports & Recreations. Nonfiction. 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.… (more)

all members

▾Members

Recently added by

zen420guy, FamiliesUnitedLL, LPSOaklandbook, QEHS-Library, LivC, dannyholo, aquamari, BVottero

▾Tags

▾LibraryThing Recommendations

▾Member recommendations

10
Muck City: Winning and Losing in Football's Forgotten Town by Bryan Mealer (TomWaitsTables)
00
Fall River Dreams: A Team's Quest for Glory, A Town's Search for Its Soul by Bill Reynolds (gtown)

▾Lists

Sports Illustrated's The Top 100 Sports Books of All Time (22)

Sports (20)

100 New Classics (89)

» 5 more

Mustich's 1000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life Changing List (467)

Read These Too (189)

Books about sports (57)

Florida (125)

Banned Books Week 2014 (198)

▾Will you like it?

▾Conversations (About links)

No current Talk conversations about this book.

» See also 61 mentions

▾Member reviews

date ▼ | votes

Showing 1-5 of 71 (next | show all)

I have not read this. Y’all I do not care for sports at all but a good book is a good book.

I enjoyed Doris Kern Goodwin’s book Wait Til Next Year so we’ll see how this stacks up. I’ll update after I read this.

FamiliesUnitedLL | Apr 24, 2024 |

I really don't know football at all, and I think that prevented me a bit from enjoying this book as much as other people. For one thing, I really didn't get a handle on all of the different players (only Boobie stuck out) and my eyes glazed over when Bissinger would do a play-by-play of the games. But this is a powerful book about adolescence and the allure and psychic dangers of sports and putting people on a pedestal. (

)

jklugman | Dec 29, 2022 |

PAP II Summer Reading:

As with Into the Wild, I did put this one off, too, for nearly three months, and it was the one I finished within twelve hours of the first day of school. Unlike Into the Wild, I find very little redeemable about this book, which I continued to look for a thread of light in (even as a mismanaged sports metaphor for the urban superhero), but I found myself in a depressing dirge that told tack by tack exactly why high school football should be removed from ruining children's lives.

I can easily piece together how we'll use it to discuss identity, conformity, and individualism, but just as much I'm counting down to returning it to Amazon in exchange for a completely different book, and thanking my stars that Audible does that. (

)

wanderlustlover | Dec 27, 2022 |

A look at Permian High School foot ball program in 1988. H.G. Bissinger followed this team for one season, then in this edition went back 25 years later to follow up his book. It is a raw look at many issues that our country faces today. (

)

foof2you | Nov 24, 2021 |

A book about high school football passions run amok, *Friday Night Lights* is a disturbing tale about how some citizens of a depressed West Texas oil town (Odessa) allowed their devotion to the Permian High School Panthers to be more important than everything else. In 1988, Bissinger took a leave of absence from his job at the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper to move to Odessa, TX for a year and chronicle the lives of six Permian High football players during the 1988 season. His portrait of the town and its citizens is not a flattering one; as he relates in an epilogue or appendix of sorts that was added to later editions, Bissinger had to cancel the Odessa stop on his tour promoting *Friday Night Lights* (which originally came out in September, 1990) because of threats of bodily harm. Made into a movie, the book is a compelling read. (

)

Jimbookbuff1963 | Jun 5, 2021 |

date ▼ | votes

Showing 1-5 of 71 (next | show all)

▾Published reviews

no reviews | add a review

▾Other authors

» Add other authors (5 possible)

▾Series and work relationships

Has the adaptation

Friday Night Lights [2004 film] by Peter Berg

Is abridged in

Reader's Digest Today's Best Nonfiction 14 1991 by Reader's Digest

▾Awards and Honors

Distinctions

New York Times bestseller (Nonfiction – 1990)

Notable Lists

1000 Books to Read Before You Die

ALA 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000-2009

ALA Outstanding Books for the College Bound (Humanities – 2004)

view history

▾Common Knowledge

You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.

For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.

Canonical title

Original title

Alternative titles

Original publication date

1990

People/Characters

Gary Gaines

Important places

Permian High School, Odessa, Texas, USA

Midland, Texas, USA

Important events

Related movies

Friday Night Lights (2006 | IMDb)

Friday Night Lights (2004 | IMDb)

Epigraph

In the Shreve High football stadium, I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville, And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood, And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel, Dreaming of heroes.

-From "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio", by James Wright

Dedication

To Howard, whom I miss. To Sarah, Gerry and Zachary, whom I love.

First words

Maybe it was a suddenly acute awareness of being "thirtysomething."

Quotations

Last words

Disambiguation notice

This is the book version, not the film or TV series.

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Halberstam, David

Original language

Canonical DDC/MDS

Canonical LCC

▾References

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English (5)

Early history of American football

Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream

History of American football

Modern history of American football

Permian High School

▾Book descriptions

Sports & Recreations. Nonfiction. 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.

▾Library descriptions

No library descriptions found.

▾LibraryThing members' description

Book description

Follows the 1988 season of the Permian Panthers, a high school football team in Odessa, Texas, exploring the lives of the players and the impact of the championship team on the small town.

Haiku summary