Friday Night Lights (25th Anniversary Edition): A Town, a Team, and a Dream - Hardcover

Bissinger, H. G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0306824213 ISBN 13: 9780306824210

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2015

Synopsis

Named Sports Illustrated's best football book of all time and a #1 NYT bestseller, this is the classic story of a high school football team whose win-loss record has a profound influence on the town around them.
Return once again to the timeless account of the Permian Panthers of Odessa -- the winningest high-school football team in Texas history. Socially and racially divided, Odessa isn't known to be a place big on dreams, but every Friday night from September to December, when the Panthers play football, dreams can come true.
With frankness and compassion, Pulitzer Prize winner H. G. Bissinger unforgettably captures a season in the life of Odessa and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires -- and sometimes shatters -- the teenagers who wear the Panthers' uniforms.
The inspiration for the hit television program and film of the same name, this anniversary edition features a new afterword by the author.

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. (Buzz) Bissinger has won the Pulitzer Prize, the Livingston Award, the National Headliner Award, and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel for his reporting. The author of the highly acclaimedThree Nights in August, he has written for the television series NYPD Blue and is a contributing editor atVanity Fair. He lives in Washington State.

About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0306824213
• ISBN 13: 9780306824210
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432