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Loading... Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (1990)by Buzz Bissinger
![]() No current Talk conversations about this book. 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. ( ![]() 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. 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. 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. How could I be a Texan and not read this... Although not from West Texas I saw hints of this even in Austin. Good book and just incredible what we put these hs kids through... no reviews | add a review
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Return once again to the enduring account of life in the Mojo lane, to 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, Bissinger chronicles one of the Panthers' dramatic seasons and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires-and sometimes shatters-the teenagers who wear the Panthers' uniforms. Includes Reader's Group Guide inside.Now a major motion picture starring Billy Bob Thorton. No library descriptions found. |
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)796.332 — The arts Recreational and performing arts Athletic and outdoor sports and games Ball sports Inflated ball driven by the foot American footballLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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