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Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream Paperback – 28 April 2005

by H G Bissinger (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,873 ratings
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In the state of Texas American football is a religion. And nowhere is more fanatical about its football than the small town of Odessa. There, every Friday night from September to November, a bunch of seventeen-year-old kids play their hearts out for the honour of their high school. In front of 20,000 people.

In 1988 H.G. Bissinger spent a season in Odessa discovering just what makes a town pin its hopes on eleven boys on a football field. He lived with the students, coaches and townspeople who dedicate their lives to their team, sharing their joys and triumphs, their pains, injuries and bitter disappointments. He returned with a compassionate but hard-eyed story of a town riven by money, race and class, where a high school can spend more on medical supplies for its athletic program than on its English department.

Friday Night Lights is one of the best books about sport ever written. It is the story of how dreams and reality collide, at once glorious and immensely sad. Because for the 30-odd boys of the Permian Panthers, these days will have been the best of their lives.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    416 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Yellow Jersey
  4. Publication date
    28 April 2005
  5. Dimensions
    12.9 x 2.5 x 19.8 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    9780224076746
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0224076746
  8. See all details
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From the brand

From the Publisher

Vintage Brand: Read Boldly, Think Differently.

Product description

Review

Superb and disturbing - More than a sports book, it's a search for the America of ordinary people. ― Newsday

A remarkable book, fascinating from start to finish, full of surprises. ― David Halberstam

Friday Night Lights offers a biting indictment of the sports craziness that grips ... most of American society, while at the same time providing a moving evocation of its powerful allure. ― New York Times Book Review

Just about everything you could ask for in a sports book ― New York Times

From the Publisher

A classic of sportswriting - about a season spent following a town and a team's hopes and shattered dreams - and now a major Hollywood film

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0224076744
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yellow Jersey (28 April 2005)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780224076746
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0224076746
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.9 x 2.5 x 19.8 cm
  • Customer reviews:
    4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,873 ratings

About the authors

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  1. Buzz Bissinger

    Buzz Bissinger

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    Buzz Bissinger is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of four books, including the New York Times bestseller 3 Nights in August and Friday Night Lights, which has sold two million copies and inspired a film and TV franchise. He is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and a sports columnist for The Daily Beast. He has written for the New York Times, The New Republic, Time and many other publications.

    See more on the author's page
  2. H. G. Bissinger

    H. G. Bissinger

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    Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
2,873 global ratings

Top reviews from United Kingdom

Daniel Cann
5.0 out of 5 stars Compulsive reading
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 October 2012
Verified Purchase
My Friday Night Lights journey has gone in reverse: firstly I watched the television series, then the film, and finally, I read the book it was all based on.

I confess to a rudimentary knowledge of the NFL. I used to watch it on Channel 4 in the 1980s (and still do today). But this story is not about the professional stars of the game; rather it is about the importance of American football to a small town in the heartland of the US, and because of this, it managed to really strike a chord with me.

I have always enjoyed fly-on-the wall journalism and reporting, I have read Norman Mailer's book `The Big Fight' which covered `The Rumble in the Jungle,' and George Plimpton's accounts of playing for a football team and sparring world boxing champion Archie Moore.

Here Buzz Bissinger has totally immersed himself in his subject matter - choosing to uproot his young family from Philadelphia to Odessa, Texas for a year. This takes commitment to subject matter to new heights.

Thankfully he saw the ambitious venture through and after two years of editing, this revealing and searingly honest book is the result. The most important thing about any journalism is authenticity. Good writers can spin a yarn or two, cobbling together a story to make a point or to raise awareness, but it is great writers that explore and reveal the underbelly, the truth of something. Bissinger has achieved this with his book.

The struggles, hopes and day to day lives of the people he lived with in Odessa, are all brought under his microscope and movingly and sensitively recounted here.

Bissinger is not afraid to tackle the racism that was present in the West Texas town in the late 1980s, where other writers may have preferred to just focus on the sport, rather than explore the uncomfortable truths undercutting it. Do not be fooled, this is not just another book about sports. It covers the economy, the politics, traditions and attitudes of people of all ages in a part of America which is often overlooked, yet is so typical of it.

Odessa in 1988 could have been any small town in the USA and by focussing on it this is far more exciting than your usual run of the mill sports book.

This is the American Dream, warts and all. I was absolutely hooked. Now I know why this small but hugely important book influenced and spawned a film as well as a long running television series.
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Mr. Garry W.
4.0 out of 5 stars Sport. It's not a matter of life and death. It's more important than that.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 April 2014
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This is a book that transcends it's subject. It is far more than just a book about American Football. If you are not a gridiron fan (like I am) it will not spoil your enjoyment of this finely written book. The fact that sport is so much more important than education is a difficult theme to warm to.
Many of the kids sucked into the world of Odessa High School football, give up everything to progress in a sport that, in the vast majority of cases, spits them out when it has finished with them. The way the system and the sport of football completely emasculates the education of pupils is outrageous. Admittedly, some of these kids would have nothing if they did not have football. But, nevertheless, this is no way to prepare young adults for a successful life or career.
The way the banks behaved during the oil boom of the early eighties is incredibly reminiscent of the way they still behave. Have we learnt nothing?
So, overall, an enjoyable read about a deeply flawed educational system.
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Eric the Red
5.0 out of 5 stars One the great box sets
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 January 2016
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I really hope I have the words to convey how much me and my wife enjoyed this series. I felt I knew when I bought the set that I would like this series as I love books and films about 'small town America ' and this seemed to encapsulate everything I wanted.
As we normally watch TV box sets in an evening together I really hoped that my wife would also like it and as it turned out she did. She has no interest in the sporting action but loved the different characters and the way the series panned out and progressed.

Petty much every night we sat and watched one or two episodes and the full five series flew by all too quickly . We were both at a bit of a loss when it finished and its replacement Grey's Anatomy, while enjoyable, does not even come close to matching the acting, storyline and emotional investment in it's characters.

I normally sell our watched box sets on Amazon but this is a keeper, as was Breaking Bad which we watched some years ago along with the Wire. West Wing was also kept and we that was watched again some months ago and enjoyed as much as the first time.

Series like Friday Night Lights and the ones I mention above are the sparkling gems that make those few hours at night watching TV so enjoyable and so much to look forward to. To say we recommend this series is an understatement. I don't normally watch the added bonus bits on the DVD but I watched the cast talking individually about the making of the series and the sense of joy and enjoyment they clearly had came shining through the interviews.

THIS SERIES IS A MUST!
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Top reviews from other countries

Eric Michaels
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book/awesome story!
Reviewed in the United States on 12 March 2024
Verified Purchase
Bought this for my 14 year old football obsessed son. He finished it in a few days and loved it. So well written and did a great job showing all the ups and downs that come with playing big time HS football.
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James Watt
5.0 out of 5 stars Gift for my wife
Reviewed in Canada on 21 December 2023
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Wife is on cloud nine having
A book to read before she goes to be at night. Says she loves the book!
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California Dreaming
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Friday Night Read -- After the Game is Over
Reviewed in the United States on 5 December 2023
Verified Purchase
Even though I'm a football fan, and even though I'm a Billy Bob Thornton fan, I waited nearly 20 years after it released to finally watch "Friday Night Lights" (FNLM) the movie. I've just seen so many bad sports movies I'm leery of watching another bad one. But I finally decided to watch it November of 2023 and I thought it was really good. I had no idea that people could be such big football fans, especially of high school football. (As a bit of a side note one of my favorite "Christmas movies" ever is "Bad Santa" which stars Mr. Thornton. It is a dark comedy that I found hilarious. Surely not everyone will like it, but I sure did. But I never knew that Santa Claus used such foul language! Or could be so mean!)

So afterwards I had to read "Friday Night Lights" (FNLB) the book, written by H. G. Bissinger. I guess the first version of FNLB released in 1990 after Mr. Bissinger spent a year in Odessa, Texas documenting the life of high school football players, their coaches, their families, and even their town. I read an updated version that released in 2015 where it includes at least an additional Epilogue to the story as Mr. Bissinger travelled back to Odessa many years later to interview some of the original characters and maybe "just hang out" with them. I got the sense that he felt a real vested interest in the story and the characters and so he was really interested to know how some of their lives have turned out.

Now, I will warn you in advance if you take my very strong recommendation to buy and read FNLB that it does contain some language that some people might find "offensive." Maybe it's not as bad as "Bad Santa" but not for a lack of trying. In particular there is one word that appears more often than in a Dave Chappelle skit. Perhaps Mr. Bissinger uses it a bit too much, but I understand what his motivation was while writing: He wanted to get across to the reader the state of race relations in Texas back in the 1980s. So I took it with a grain of salt while reading.

There are some differences between the book and the movie, of course. A film is a different medium and the writer and director have usually maybe two hours to discuss a story; in a book the number of pages that an author can publish is theoretically open-ended although I'm guessing most people get intimidated if a book is longer than, say, 500 pages. So I understand why filmmakers often take liberties when adapting a screenplay from a book. One item that stood out to me: In the book the 1988 Permian Panthers lost during the semi-finals game while I believe in the movie they "lost their MOJO" in the state championship. And I believe that the actual game was played outdoors but in the movie I believe it was filmed in a dome. There are of course many other minor differences, differences that didn't bother me much.

But in reality this does suggest that sometimes it might be better to watch a movie first before reading the book on the same topic. I've noticed that when I go with this order I'm more forgiving of the movie because then obviously I don't really yet know the story. Reverse things -- read the book first then watch the movie -- and there's more of a temptation to nitpick. But to me there's another advantage of watching the movie first: I can learn in two hours if the story seems interesting enough for me then to take the time to read the book. After all it usually takes quite a bit longer to read a book than watch a film. Watching the film first is a good weeding-out mechanism, in other words.

There are many characters in both the film and the book because football teams generally have around 50 players, plus or minus. And in this story there are many additional characters, too many to list here. I will write that I didn't have too much trouble keeping track of the players in particular and I felt that after reading I had a pretty good idea what they are like as people. Each character has a unique personality and I think the author does a great job here of displaying and explaining those personalities. For example the quarterback was more quiet than you'd usually expect a quarterback to be. It is interesting though how few of the players actually went on to play college football and I believe none of them ever made it to the NFL although there have been members of the Panthers over the years who have gone pro. But it does give evidence that the Panthers are or were a "team" in the truest sense of the word since, to use perhaps an overused expression, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts."

Not everyone in the story has a truly happy ending as you'd expect. For example, James Earl "Boobie" Miles had quite a few run-ins with the law and I believe that he's back in prison as of 2023. But he was the running back on the 1988 team who supposedly had true NFL potential although that potential was dashed when he had a serious knee injury during just a scrimmage. This must have made it doubly bad for him since it didn't even happen in a game that counted.

Well, if you want to read a sports book that's actually really good I highly recommend "Friday Night Lights." Another one that's excellent is "Moneyball: the Art of Winning an Unfair Game" written by Michael Lewis and it was of course also adapted to an excellent film although I consider "Moneyball" to be more a book about Economics than sports. Read both books and then watch both movies, I say. But since it's nearly Christmas of 2023 I would wrap it up in a bow by watching "Bad Santa" too. Make it a Billy-Bob-Thornton Marathon, in other words.
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Ted M. Decker
5.0 out of 5 stars The real story for H.S. football in Texas
Reviewed in the United States on 21 November 2023
Verified Purchase
The book was bought for my elderly mother. There was no large print in the library. She found it very easy to read and enjoyed the story as I did many years ago.
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Cale
5.0 out of 5 stars Great read!
Reviewed in the United States on 22 July 2022
Verified Purchase
This is a detailed story of Permian football and the Permian Basin, it’s a great read!
Seller did a great job sending out quickly and the book was just what I ordered.
One person found this helpful
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