Friday Night Lights Shines Bright

H.G. Bissinger takes you along for an emotions-soaked ride with the Permian Panthers (a high school football team from Odessa, Texas) during the 1988 season. Although the tempo suffers a tad in some parts as is inevitable in such books, Friday Night Lights is an eclectic mix of football zealotry, small town politics, race relations, suspense, drama etc. H.G. Bissinger makes you feel as if you are in Odessa cheering the Permian Panthers on their state championship ride, many times through the book. Also included are –  some shocking revelations like the fact that segregation ended in Texas in 1982 (28 years after the landmark Brown V. Board of Education case ended segregation in 1954), The Texas legal machinery trying to figure out if the Carter Cowboys’s Gary Edwards passed Algebra II or not is a fascinating and troubling as well.