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

Bissinger, H. G.; Bissinger, Buzz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060974060 ISBN 13: 9780060974060

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1991

Synopsis

A profile of the town of Odessa, Texas, and its high school football team--the Panthers, the high school team with the best winning record in Texas history--chronicles its dramatic 1988 season and focuses on the bitter struggle between sports and education

About this title

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.

About the Author:

H. G. Bissinger 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 the author of the highly acclaimed A Prayer for the City, and is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He lives in Philadelphia.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0060974060
• ISBN 13: 9780060974060
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416