After Addison-Wesley published H.G. "Buzz" Bissinger's nonfiction book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream in 1990, the anger toward Bissinger in the city of Odessa, Tex., was so strong that the author had to cancel the Odessa portion of his tour. Ostensibly a chronicle of the 1988 season of the Permian Panthers high school football team, Friday Night Lights is also a social history and expose of an economically depressed and shockingly racially divided city of 90,000 in West Texas. Throughout the book, Bissinger focuses in particular on six players on that Permian Panthers team, including fullback Don Billingsley, quarterback Mike Winchell and running back James "Boobie" Miles, who is worshiped by Permian fans until he suffers a serious knee injury and is all but thrown away.
Made into a movie and a TV series, Friday Night Lights is a riveting account of a community and an obsession that every year turned teenage boys into "unwitting sacrifices to a strange and powerful god." A 25th anniversary edition from Da Capo Press, featuring a new where-are-they-now afterword by the author, is available now. --Alex Mutter
