The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
by Michael Lewis
List Price:
Our Price: $5.65
You Save: $19.30 (77%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Michael LewisEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-02
ISBN: 039306123X
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Book Reviews of The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
Book Review: Way beyond football...
Summary: 5 Stars
I believe Blind Side is Michael Lewis's best book since Liars Poker. As other reviewers noted, the book can be read on many levels, with the human interest story dominating the football technicalities.
Ultimately, the lesson of the Michael Oher story and this book can be summarized as a combination of unlikely circumstances all coming together in a single place and time. Somewhere in West Memphis, a well-intentioned man named Big Tony fulfills his dying mother's wish: enroll his son at a Christian school. Michael just happens to be sleeping on Big Tony's floor: a few months earlier or later, and Michael would be crashing elsewhere. So Michael gets invited to go along.
Michael gets referred to a home study course to prepare for Briarcrest. A few months later, a conscience-stricken administrator realizes he made a big mistake: no way could Michael handle home study or any other study, and now he's out of the public school system. So Michael gets admitted to Briarcrest, where an astute science teacher realizes he's a kinesthetic learner. He can't take tests but he absorbs the material.
Cut to the movie Hoop Dreams: Remember the scene when the evil high school administrator sits at the adding machine, counting up the debts the departing player's parents now owe the school? Ka-ching! And here's an administrator saying, "We blew it." Draw whatever ironic conclusions you like, it's a powerful comparison.
Meanwhile, Michael's life keeps getting better. One Thanksgiving weekend, Michael has a chance encounter with the one man at Briarcrest most unlikely to understand and help: Sean Tuohy, who rose from poverty through sports ("I majored in basketball," he says of his college years). Tuohy's wife Leigh Anne exclaims, "He's wearing shorts!" and soon this former sorority girl and Ole Miss cheerleader has added Michael as a new family member. Michael gets his own futon and dresser, as well as a place on the family Christmas card and his own share of the family's wealth.
By now we should not be surprised to learn that a child can reach ninth grade in a public school system without the rudiments of learning. Any reader of the New York Times magazine will be aware of our government's priorities. We've read countless stories of inner city misery, including an excerpt from this book. If Michael had been caught with a few grains of marijuana, or had shoplifted a five dollar item, somehow money would be found to administer court costs and jail time. But an infusion of cash into his school system would prevent these and countless other criminal acts for a fraction of the cost, and in the process turn out some educated citizens.
Michael seems a worthy recipient of the luck that came his way. A gentle giant, he seems eager to please, yet the book downplays his social skills. In one casually presented scene, Leigh Anne drops Michael off from their first memorable shopping trip. He goes inside, then reappears with a tribe of small children who form a chain to carry the new merchandise into the house. And in another, Michael appears to fail the written part of his driving test...until one of the "ladies" appears to congratulate Michael and remind him he's promiised her a sideline pass in the NFL! If the Tuohys hadn't intervened, would Michael be a con artist?
I must say I can't get concerned over the tutoring and gamesmanship to get Michael up to NCAA-approved academic standards. As Lewis points out, other Ole Miss football players lack basic skills including lifemanship. Football-dominated schools clearly have monetary incentives to recruit top players, so why not drop the hypocrisy and reward players directly? Instead of giving them scholarships that lead to degrees based on ease of subject matter, give them money so they can function (and maybe even go to school) afterwards.
I don't think the Tuohys were motivated to help Ole Miss in the beginning. Apparently Sean was looking for Division II schools where Michael could play basketball when the football coaches revealed their interest (blindsiding Sean?!)
At times I couldn't help thinking, "Instead of just lavishing all this attention on one person, why don't the Tuohys build a school in West Memphis?" But of course it's easier to think of changing the world one person at a time (as Oprah likes to say). Leigh Anne suggests starting a foundation to help other athletes reach academic qualifications and thus get a chance at a college scholarship.
They won't save everybody. Lewis makes us aware that if Michael's talent lay in playing piano or solving differential equations, he'd never have escaped his background. Then again, as a society we value football more than music or math...we can leave the values debate to another review.
The fact that Blind Side encourages us to raise and discuss these questions is a major achievement. I for one was sorry to put the book down. I wanted to spend a little more time with the Tuohys and of course with Michael, too.
Summary of The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
By the author of the bestselling Moneyball: in football, as in life, the value we place on people changes with the rules of the games they play.
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, Evangelical, 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.
State & Local Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in State & Local Books
Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Storyby Timothy B. Tyson
Crown; Published: 2004-05-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.99
Price in other shops:
Downtown: My Manhattanby Pete Hamill
Little, Brown and Company; Published: 2004-12-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops:
Shallow Grave in Trinity Countyby Harry Farrell
St. Martin's Griffin; Published: 1999-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $42.89
Shadow of the Hunterby Richard K. Nelson
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1983-04-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.99
Price in other shops:
Movie Anecdotesby Peter Hay
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1991-12-12; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.50
Price in other shops:
Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James Polkby William Dusinberre
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2007-10-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.00
Price in other shops:
Oh the Glory of It Allby Sean Wilsey
Penguin Audio; Published: 2005-05-19; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Editionby Marc Reisner
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1993-01-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.22
Price in other shops:
Great Plainsby Ian Frazier
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1990-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.94
Price in other shops:
Disaster! The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906by Dan Kurzman
William Morrow & Company; Published: 2001-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.93
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Boomerang: Travels in the New Third Worldby Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2011-10-03; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.25
Price in other shops:
Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhoodby Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2009-05-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.99
Price in other shops:
Next: The Future Just Happenedby Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2001-07-31; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.98
Price in other shops:
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Gameby Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2004-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.62
Price in other shops:
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machineby Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2010-03-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $8.99
Price in other shops:
The New New Thing : A Silicon Valley Storyby Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 1999-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.45
Price in other shops:
I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness, to The Blind Side, and Beyondby Michael Oher
Gotham; Published: 2011-02-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $9.99
Price in other shops:
In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Givingby Leigh Anne Tuohy, Sean Tuohy, Sally Jenkins
Spring Arbor/Ingram; Henry Holt and Co.; Published: 2010-07-13; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $3.23
Price in other shops:
Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Streetby Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 1989-10-17; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $7.30
Price in other shops:
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Gameby Michael Lewis
W. W. Norton & Company; Published: 2003-05-10; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.79
Price in other shops: