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A review by ehays84
Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by Buzz Bissinger
4.0
30 years on, this book felt very strangely timely to today. Let's see, oil prices fluctuating causing domestic concern and global uncertainty, racism against African Americans and Latinos, sports dominating the public psyche allowing for the money of sports to take away all morality surrounding the sport--what year are we in again?
I had known about this book for some time, but never had watched the show or gotten around to the book until now. It was very well researched, written, and informed me about life in a part of the country I had known really only as a stereotype--West Texas. It turns out apparently some of the stereotypes are probably true.
As others have said, it's really a sociology book about a place in America more than a football book. I think it would have been a lot better if one of his main characters was one of the lineman rather than the "glamor" positions he mostly covered. The access he was given overall was pretty incredible though, and from reading what he wrote on the 10th anniversary, it seems there was a lot of controversy about that.
Very glad I read it, but not for everyone. Very gritty and hard-hitting, even apart from football, and overall pretty sad that a city lives and dies with a high school football team. Mostly only bad comes of that.
I had known about this book for some time, but never had watched the show or gotten around to the book until now. It was very well researched, written, and informed me about life in a part of the country I had known really only as a stereotype--West Texas. It turns out apparently some of the stereotypes are probably true.
As others have said, it's really a sociology book about a place in America more than a football book. I think it would have been a lot better if one of his main characters was one of the lineman rather than the "glamor" positions he mostly covered. The access he was given overall was pretty incredible though, and from reading what he wrote on the 10th anniversary, it seems there was a lot of controversy about that.
Very glad I read it, but not for everyone. Very gritty and hard-hitting, even apart from football, and overall pretty sad that a city lives and dies with a high school football team. Mostly only bad comes of that.