The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game

by Michael Lewis

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393330472
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	09/17/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	31,731
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.20(d)
Lexile:	980L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, The Undoing Project, and The Fifth Risk. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his family.

Date of Birth:

October 15, 1960

Place of Birth:

New Orleans, LA

Education:

Princeton University, B.A. in Art History, 1982; London School of Economics, 1985

Editorial Reviews

"It’s not a jock book. It’s not a sociology book. It’s a storybook about modern society, ancient virtues, and the power of love, money and talent to do a little good."

Baltimore Sun - Jay Hancock

"Lewis’s overview of the evolution of NFL strategy…is not only sound but shrewder than that of many so-called football insiders who can’t see the forest for the trees."

Washington Post - Allen Barra

"The Blind Side is as insightful and moving a meditation on class inequality in America as I have ever read—although to put it that way, I realize, makes it sound deadly dull. It isn’t."

Malcolm Gladwell

"Its dialogue is sharp and its anecdotes well chosen."

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

"[Lewis] is advancing a new genre of journalism."

New York Times Book Review - George F. Will

"The Blind Side works on three levels. First as a shrewd analysis of the NFL; second, as an exposé of the insanity of big-time college football recruiting; and, third, as a moving portrait of the positive effect that love, family, and education can have in reversing the path of a life that was destined to be lived unhappily and, most likely, end badly."

Booklist - Wes Lukowsky

"As close to perfect as a work of popular nonfiction can be."

New York Times Book Review - Malcolm Gladwell

Lewis knows how to put the reader on the field.... ?The Blind Side? displays all of Lewis' particular writing strengths: the ability to drive a story forward, the eye for both the big picture and telling detail, shrewd wit, and an unerring instinct for discerning social complexity.... You'll be tempted to stand up and cheer as you read.
”

Susan Larson - Times-Picayune

Lewis provides a compelling book... explaining how this subtle and brutal game has changed as the balance of power has shifted between talented athletes and clever, devoted coaches.
”

The Economist

No reader with even a passing interest in the current state of our games should fail to read it.
”

Bill Littlefield - Boston Globe

Lewis has such a gift for storytelling... he writes as lucidly for sports fans as for those who read him for other reasons.
”

Janet Maslin - New York Times

[?The Blind Side?] is about much more than college football recruitment... it is actually about the American dream itself.
”

A.G. Gancarski - Washington Times

Provides deep insights about sport and America.

The Spectator

The strongest strand of The Blind Side is about sporting strategy.
When brain defeats brawn in one of Michael Lewis's books, you can almost hear the prose style lift off.

Ed Smith - The Times [London]

Lewis has made a habit of writing about sport recently, but sport is really only a subtext for a much more meaningful examination of class and race. I wept at the end, something I have not done at the end of a work of non-fiction for a very long time.

Malcolm Gladwell - The Observer

A wonderful tale.

John Gapper - Financial Times

Starred Review.... The book works on three levels. First as a shrewd analysis of the NFL; second,
as an expose of the insanity of big-time college football recruiting;
and, third, as a moving portrait of the positive effect that love,
family, and education can have in reversing the path of a life that was destined to be lived unhappily and, most likely, end badly.

Booklist

It's much more than a treatise on football; it's an exploration of the limits of conventional thinking and how strategic changes affect the value of quick-footed behemoths.... That he makes it easy for his reader to comprehend—and enjoy—is enough for most critics to give Lewis's latest a rousing cheer.

Bookmarks Magazine

The strongest strand of The Blind Side is about sporting strategy.
When brain defeats brawn in one of Michael Lewis's books, you can almost hear the prose style lift off.— Ed Smith

The Times [London]

Lewis has made a habit of writing about sport recently, but sport is really only a subtext for a much more meaningful examination of class and race. I wept at the end, something I have not done at the end of a work of non-fiction for a very long time.— Malcolm Gladwell

The Observer

A wonderful tale.— John Gapper

Financial Times