Rating: 
Summary: One of the best (and most truthful) books I've read
Review: I found Friday Night Lights to be one of the most truthful and well written books ever. I have played football in Texas, and have seen how it is a religious institution, and how players become "untouchables," gods in themselves. The author had me literally dreaming of playing just one more day. Plus Bissinger's journalistic style flows perfectly with the context. He sifts through not only the game, but the emotions, the politics, and devotion, not only towards football, but also the social implications based in an entire town. The author strays as far as to examine racial tension and its relationship to what happens on the field. Bissinger sums up the monsterous impact something so small can have on a persons life, particualrily if it is deified. This is a must read for all, not just for football fans. If you remotely liked "Varsity Blues," you will love this book. Personally, after reading this novel I fell in love with the Permian Panther mystique, Mojo.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: This book was an excellent read. As someone who works with part of a college football team that has a winning tradition, I found this book to be extremely insightful. I found the characters to be enjoyable and very relatable to those that I work with. I found myself cheering for the boys of Odesa and feeling sorry for them when they were low. I couldn't put this book down. I read it in 24 hours it was so powerful. As an author I can only hope that I can some day write this well and with such emotion.
Rating:
Summary: Simply one of the finest sports chronicles ever
Review: When I first picked up this book, on my lunch break, I arbitrarily flipped to a page in the middle and started reading. I became so engrossed in it that I was late getting back to work from my lunch break. Such is the superb quality of writing that Bissinger brings to this book. Friday Night Lights is about the Permian High School Panthers football team in the 1988 season. In Odessa, TX, they only "have two things - football and oil, and there ain't no more oil." Carried on the adolescent shoulders of the black-clad Panthers are the hopes, dreams, aspirations, and societal well-being of an entire community. The book focuses on the intense scrutiny and pressure placed on the players, coaches, and even families associated with the program. After a tough loss, the head coach can expect to have his house vandalized, his family verbally assaulted, and calls made for his firing. The student population of Permian is predominantly white, but the few black players imported from Odessa's poor, mostly black, south side are some of the team's most successful players. The book highlights the contrast in the white, wealthy suburban area Permian is located in against the older section of Odessa, populated mostly by blacks and Hispanics. The book also profiles several of the team's star players. Some live for every single moment they can wear the Panthers uniform, while others are conflicted at having to play in such a pressure-cooker environment. Some are the lucky sons of Odessa's richest residents, bound for Ivy-League schools, while others come from painful poverty and broken homes. Odessa is portrayed as an entire city of broken dreams, devastated by the downturn in the oil industry where unemployment is high and crime higher. What holds the community together is the Friday Night Lights at Ratliff Stadium, where the Panthers do battle not only for team and school pride, but for the pride of an entire community and people. I cannot recommend this book more highly.
Rating:
Summary: Bright Lights...for awhile
Review: Good writing and a strong sense of place keep the pages turning. The author deserves credit for keeping all the players straight -- we get a sense of each personality on the team.
I read Friday Night Lights less as a football book, but as a book about a part of American life that influences the country in more ways than we realize. In many of our institutions -- elections, courtroom trials -- life imitates football. It's all about winning and losing. And often the players are short-term and expendable.
Actually the most important part of the book comes at the end, when we're told what happened afterward and behind the scenes. The movie leaves out key background information about Dallas-Carter: One football hero was ineligible due to a low algebra grade. Following a bizarre court battle, he was allowed to play.
Yet the lesson was not lost on the Dallas-Carter team, as several became involved in armed robberies, just for fun. Instead of heading off to Division I schools, they began serving long prison sentences. Frankly, the sentences seemed a little unfair, as the system grooms these kids for big egos and delinquency. Maybe the athletic leagues need some kind of post-season camp for graduating seniors, emphasizing Life After High School Sports.
Of the Permian team, only Chavez went on to a really meaningful career. He came from a family of professionals and presumably had some guidance. The rest of the team survives on blue collar jobs, with a couple of exceptions -- the surveyor and insurance salesman.
We can bemoan a value system that puts pressure on the coaches, while paying them 50% more than academic department heads. But that value system dominates the US, and maybe the world, not just Texas. Good looks and crowd-pleasing style count for a lot, everywhere. If we really valued academics, we'd put our money there.
Rating: 
Summary: You are better off watching the movie
Review: I was an English major in college and later taught it. I'm loathe to ever push a movie over a book, but that is the case here. (However, the movie departs from the book in a lot of ways, and is actually much different than the book)
This book is severely tedious at times, with overly-long descriptions about the dust, sweat and oil that inhabit Odessa, Texas. Bissinger goes into too much detail about the characters at times; he loses them by trying to explain every facet of their life, including the pulls and opinions of their friends and families.
There are some great passages in the book, but they are few and far between the book's 400 + pages. I found the most interesting part of the book to be the obsession that the town had with the team, and the fact that the players go from 18 year old Gods to 19 year old has-beens in Odessa.
Rating:
Summary: The Friday Night Life
Review: Friday Night Lights is a very interesting book that keeps you reading until you make it to the back cover. It is book mainly focused towards high school teens and talks about racial difference problems, school rivalries, and the fight to take the Texas State Championship trophy. It shows the pressure given by the fans and relatives to take it all. The Panthers seem to carry the whole town's moral on their shoulders when they step on to the field. I highly recommend that all reading this should read H.G. Bissinger's award-winning Friday Night Lights. Friday Night Lights will take you to the little town of Odessa to one town, the Permian football team, and their dream.
Rating:
Summary: An illuminating - and fascinating! - social commentary
Review: What an incredible book. Bissinger does an terrific job in this account of the small town Odessa, located in Texas, and its obsession with high school football. You begin to see how distorted the town's cultural values are when you see what low priority is given to education, and how much money, time and energy is spent on football. Football players are revered when they do well, but then forgotten as soon as they are no longer playing. The book gives you insights into many other conflicts and tensions within the town that are brought out by the obsession with football - race, socioeconomic differences, values. It is just about the dynamics of the town itself, as it is about football.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: Adolesence is perhaps the most important part of eye, it's where the mind and body learn and grow. In the book "Friday Night Lights" that idea is prevalent from beginning to end. Although, in the case of the people in the book they have to faster more then the common person. A whole team, young league boys that have the power to control the emotions of a town. The coach who is under heavy scrutiny and pressure to be nothing short of perfect. The book has the QB who has conflicting issues with responsibilities of being captain. A linebacker with a love-hate relationship for the game, the team must be perfect they can't lose and with every loss comes disappointment for the town. These boys are treated like celebrities, and some bask in the glory while others shun it. A very strong bond is established, and the players live and play for each other.
Being a football player I can't help but relate to the book, but I write thi opinion not as an athlete but as a kid going through life. Furthermore, this book reaches more than just athletes and the problems and emotions expressed are things all kids can relate too. As teenagers we tend to worry constantly about "What If's", but this book has taught me to live in the now and sieze the day.
Rating: 
Summary: An eye-opening social commentary
Review: "Friday Night Lights" is more of a social commentary on the culture of small-town, football-mad Texas than it is a straight story about a football team between the lines in a given season. Bissinger weaves accounts of the 1988 Permian HS season into the broader concept of the book - the history and culture of Odessa, TX and its relationship with its Permian Panthers - and he does it skillfully. The writing is great and the actual football scenes and commentary, although not a dominant part of the book as many may expect, are descriptive and absorbing. And it's a credit to Bissinger's work that he can put together such a page-turner in spite of the lack of a single fully likable character and such occasionally disturbing content.
The people of Odessa have an obsessive relationship with Permian football (which escalates to hostile obsession during losing times), and as a result, the Permian players are treated like kings - until their careers are over, that is. These people are so blinded by the "Friday Night Lights" that such trivialities like rampant racism, a lack of any semblance of an education for Permian's "student"-athletes, god-like treatment and social shortcuts for 16-18 year-old boys, parental misguidance and so on get none of the attention issues like these warrant. Not surprisingly, once the short careers of Permian's players come to an end, rarely do any of them have the social skills or perspective to operate in the real world. And this isn't confined to Odessa - in Dallas' Carter HS, the idea of misguided priorities is taken to new heights, and the manner in which several of Carter's finest players blew their entire futures will leave you shaking your head, but it won't shock you, and you'll know exactly who and what is to blame.
Blame, as well as prejudice, are rampant in the book and are what prevents almost all of the characters (except for a few players) from being completely likable and worthy of sympathy. If one of the townspeople has anything positive or enlightening to say, it is usually negated by some type of racial comment or unfair generality - such as when one of them suggested that Boobie Miles be put out of his misery like a crippled horse once his football career ends. As badly as you feel for the coaches at times, the occasional maltreatment and characterization of the players is enough to wipe much of the sympathy away. Bissinger's lone failure in my mind is that the players he focused on weren't examined deeply enough, leaving the reader with only a few snapshots of each. But whether you watch them selfishly brooding and quitting the team, or outwardly blaming the coach and announcing a sudden lack of respect for him after a tough loss, it's not hard to grow impatient with the players either. One of the few people with their priorities straight in this book is the Algebra teacher at Carter HS, and you'll see what happens to him. And in most cases, any "injustices" are attributed to the works of the opposite color.
If this were a fictional story, I'd give it 1 or 2 stars, mainly because it would be hard to fathom real people acting so irrationally and irresponsibly.. But since it's non-fiction, Bissinger deserves a great deal of credit for stumbling upon such a broad story and then, as he states in his afterword, chronicling the season and the town that supports it through "the clear eyes of a journalist." As for the claims of sensationalism and exaggeration, it's hard to believe Bissinger set out for Odessa looking to defame anybody. The only criticism I have is that the players should have been focused on a little more closely, perhaps given some of the space used on the overly-long timeline of the oil boom/bust.
Rating:
Summary: Odessa Football
Review: This book i thought was good but was also boring at times. The setting takes place in Odessa, Texas. It's about a struggling High School football team who are expected to win but find it kind of hard. There are many characters in the book who mean something and one of those characters is Boobie. He is the heart and the soul of the team and he knows he's great and so does his team and his coaches. He gets hurt i think that was the downfall of the team. The book goes beyond football and gives the reader a lesson of the history of a smalltown in Texas who love football. the book is about having big dreams and having them come true.
I thought the book could have been better but no book is perfect. I thought it was intresting to see how one parent in the book hated his son because he wasn't like him when he played football. He wanted his to live the dream he got to live, but he didn't realize he had to let him have his own dreams. I would reccomend this book to most high school kids who play football. It's a good book and i learned more than just about football i also learned about the smalltown of Odessa.
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