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Friday Night Lights | 
| Author: H. G. Bissinger
Publisher: Topeka Bindery
Category: Book
Buy New: $26.80
New (1) Used (5) from $14.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  284 reviews
Sales Rank: 1891811
Media: School & Library Binding
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 367
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 6 x 1.1
ISBN: 0613371437
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.3326209764862
EAN: 9780613371438
ASIN: 0613371437
Publication Date: October 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 7 to 11 days
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| Also Available In:
| • | Mass Market Paperback - Friday Night Lights | | • | Paperback - Friday Night Lights | | • | Unknown Binding - Friday Night Lights | | • | Library Binding - Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream | | • | Audio Cassette - Friday Night Lights | | • | Audio Cassette - Friday Night Lights | | • | Paperback - Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream | | • | Paperback - Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream | | • | Kindle Edition - Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream | | • | Paperback - Friday Night Lights | | • | Paperback - Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream | | • | Hardcover - Friday Night Lights (gift): A Town, A Team And A Dream | | • | Paperback - Friday Night Lights | | • | Hardcover - Friday Night Lights | | • | Mass Market Paperback - Friday Night Lights Mass Market TV Tie-in | | • | Paperback - Friday Night Lights | | • | Turtleback - Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream | | • | Hardcover - Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (G K Hall Large Print Book Series) | | • | Audio Cassette - Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream | | • | Library Binding - Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream | | • | Library Binding - Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream | | • | Paperback - Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream | | • | Hardcover - Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, And A Dream |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
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
With frankness and compassion, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist H.G. Bissinger's national bestseller chronicles the dramatic 1988 season of the Permian Panthers--the winningest high school football team in Texas history. Friday Night Lights shows how the town's singleminded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires (or shatters) the teenagers who wear the uniforms. Featured on "Sixty Minutes." 26 halftones.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 279 more reviews...
 Best Sports Book Ever Written August 22, 2008
This is my pick for the best sports book ever written, and the reason is because it transcends sports. It captures the mood and feel of small town America as well as any book since Larry McMurtry's The LAST PICTURE SHOW. What Bissinger describes about the so-called pinnacle of life in western Texas, playing for the local team, applies just as well to high school athletes in Ohio or Pennsylvania. The flip side, of course, is once the ride is over, so is your worth to the community.
Great, great read.
 long read July 21, 2008
Since I am not into football, this book was a long read for me. It could have been halved and the story complete.
 Not sure what was worse June 4, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
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
1 out of 4 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.
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