Sports Essays, Football - History, Football - General & Miscellaneous, Football - Coaching & Instruction

The Blind Side: The Evolution of a Game

Name: The Blind Side: The Evolution of a Game
Author: Michael Lewis
ISBN: 9781415933046

by Michael Lewis, Stephen Hoye (Read by)

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Overview

The young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story will one day be among the most highly paid athletes in the National Football League. When we first meet him, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school such as, say, how to read or write. Nor has he ever touched a football.

What changes? He takes up football, and school, after a rich, EvaAngelical, Republican family plucks him from the mean streets. Their love is the first great force that alters the world's perception of the boy, whom they adopt. The second force is the evolution of professional football itself into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist turns out to be the priceless combination of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest vulnerability: his blind side.

About the Author, Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker, The New New Thing, Moneyball, The Blind Side, Panic, Home Game and The Big Short, among other works, lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Tabitha Soren, and their three children.

Biography

Twenty-four year-old Princeton graduate Michael Lewis had recently received his master's degree from the London School of Economics when Salomon Brothers hired him as a bond salesman in 1985. He moved to New York for training and witnessed firsthand the cutthroat, scruple-free culture that was Wall Street in the 1980s. Several months later, armed only with what he'd learned in training, Lewis returned to London and spent the next three years dispensing investment advice to Salomon's well-heeled clientele. He earned hundreds of thousands of dollars and survived a 1987 hostile takeover attempt at the firm. Nonetheless, he grew disillusioned with his job and left Salomon to write an account of his experiences in the industry. Published in 1989, Liar's Poker remains one of the best written and most perceptive chronicles of investment banking and the appalling excesses of an era.

Since then, Lewis has found great success as a financial journalist and bestselling author. His nonfiction ranges over a variety of topics, including U.S./Japanese business relations (Pacific Rift), the 1996 presidential campaign (Trail Fever), Silicon Valley (The New New Thing), and the Internet boom (Next: The Future Just Happened). He investigated the economics of professional sports in Moneyball (2003) and The Blind Side (2006); and, in 2008, he edited Panic, an anthology of essays about the major financial crises of 1990s and early "oughts."

Good To Know

Michael Lewis attended Isidore Newman School in his native New Orleans, LA -- a private college prep school that counts among its more distinguished alumni historian Walter Isaacson, children's book author Mo Willems, singer Harry Connick, Jr., and famous pro-football siblings Peyton and Eli Manning.

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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

We are huge fans of Michael Lewis, one of the foremost practitioners of the new literary journalism, an engaging style of nonfiction that blends workmanlike reportage and artful, creative narration. Now the bestselling author of Liar's Poker, Moneyball, and Coach scores a touchdown with this insightful look at professional football and the changing nature of a game now tightly focused on speed, size, and strength. Typically, Lewis provides an appealing, human-interest hook to his deft analysis of America's most popular spectator sport. At the heart of The Blind Side is the remarkable story of a rising gridiron star, a young man -- rescued from an excruciatingly disadvantaged youth by a remarkable family, a Christian education, and the game of football -- who seems destined for a stellar career (and an astronomical salary) in the NFL.

Allen Barra

The Blind Side, perhaps the best book written about a college football player since Willie Morris's The Courting of Marcus Dupree (1983), grabs hold of you in several ways. On one hand, you'll be appalled by the tactics used to advance academically unqualified high school and college football players. At the same time, you'll be furiously turning the pages, rooting for Michael Oher to succeed. And the story isn't over: If Oher makes it into the NFL in three years, Lewis should have a dandy follow-up.
— The Washington Post

Janet Maslin

Michael Lewis has such a gift for storytelling that it can be dangerous to his nonfiction. He is so much fun to read that he can appear to be shaping an entertaining narrative by sandpapering reality's rough edges. The real-life fable that is The Blind Side tells how a mountainous, destitute black teenager miraculously morphs into an Ole Miss football hero and becomes a member of a wealthy white evangelical family. Its dialogue is sharp and its anecdotes well chosen. Its aim for both the heartstrings and the funny bone is right on the mark.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

As he did so memorably for baseball in Moneyball, Lewis takes a statistical X-ray of the hidden substructure of football, outlining the invisible doings of unsung players that determine the outcome more than the showy exploits of point scorers. In his sketch of the gridiron arms race, first came the modern, meticulously choreographed passing offense, then the ferocious defensive pass rusher whose bone-crunching quarterback sacks demolished the best-laid passing game, and finally the rise of the left tackle the offensive lineman tasked with protecting the quarterback from the pass rusher whose presence is felt only through the game-deciding absence of said sacks. A rare creature combining 300 pounds of bulk with "the body control of a ballerina," the anonymous left tackle, Lewis notes, is now often a team's highest-paid player. Lewis fleshes this out with the colorful saga of left tackle prodigy Michael Oher. An intermittently homeless Memphis ghetto kid taken in by a rich white family and a Christian high school, Oher's preternatural size and agility soon has every college coach in the country courting him obsequiously. Combining a tour de force of sports analysis with a piquant ethnography of the South's pigskin mania, Lewis probes the fascinating question of whether football is a matter of brute force or subtle intellect. Photos. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Best-selling author Lewis (Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game) shows how changes in the pro game wrought by 49ers head coach Bill Walsh's efficient passing attack and a defense emphasizing Lawrence Taylor-style speed rushers from the quarterback's blind side mean that the offensive left tackle position now rivals the quarterback both in importance and in pay scale. Lewis's discussion of evolving strategy is woven into the true focus of his book, a profile of African American football prodigy Michael Oher. One of 13 children of a drug-addicted mother, Oher was homeless in Memphis when he was placed in the Briarcrest Christian School and then adopted by a wealthy white family. He found a sense of belonging and a future. He is now the massive left tackle for the University of Mississippi. His strange, sad, and yet inspiring tale is grippingly told here. For all libraries. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/06.]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.