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The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
| Our Price |
$ 21.96
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| Retail Value |
$ 24.95 |
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$ 2.99 (12%) |
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| Item Number |
1791510 |
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Item Description...
Overview
The best-selling author of Moneyball follows one young man from his impoverished childhood with a crack-addicted mother, through his discovery of the sport of football, to his rise to become one of the most successful, highly paid players in the NFL. 250,000 first printing. First serial, New York Times Magazine.
Publishers Description
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. |
Item Specifications...
Pages 299
Dimensions: Length: 1" Width: 6.75" Height: 9.75"
Weight: 1.25 lbs.
Binding Hardcover
Publisher W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 039306123X
EAN 9780393061239
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Availability 15 units.
Availability accurate as of May 26, 2012 07:12.
Usually ships within one to two business days from Momence, IL.
Orders shipping to an address other than a confirmed Credit Card / Paypal Billing address may incur and additional processing delay.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | wouldn't know Jan 21, 2010 |
| I wouldn't know if this is a good product or not because it was never shipped to me. I ordered it six weeks ago and have heard nothing from either this site or the seller. | | |  | Good book that produced amazing movie... Jan 20, 2010 |
I think I'll start off by saying that I'm not a sports fan. At all. I get utterly bored out of my mind if I'm in the vicinity of any sports game and don't play because it's a horrible sight to see me play a sport. But oddly enough, I have an intense like of sports movies. Which is how I learned about The Blind Side in the first place. Well, that's only partly to blame. I'm also an unabashed Sandra Bullock fan and love most of her films, so of course I had to go see The Blind Side.
Usually, I like to read a book before the movie comes out. Mostly, that's because when you see the movie first, the book is bound to get tainted with the movie. It's inevitable whether you loved it or hated it. In some rare instances where this happened I liked the movie more than the book. This happened with Practical Magic (another Sandra Bullock film) and The Blind Side.
The book focused more on the game of football than I would've liked. But then again, it is also subtitled Evolution of a Game, so it's not like I was misled. There were some parts of the book where my mind wandered and I was just thinking "Get back to the family. That's why I'm reading." Then again, there were some football only parts that had me engrossed in the book. But, the story of Michael Oher was why I kept reading.
Michael Oher's story was inspirational. He made something of himself, even though he was plagued with obstacles. And the Tuohy's taking him and all that they did for him was heartwarming. This book was also had it's fair share of humor and I let out a chuckle here and there. But with the good also comes the bad. And the bad comes from me seeing the movie first.
The characters were somewhat more likeable in the movie than in the book. Leanne Tuohy comes out more snobby and bitchy in the book. The coach, whom I loved in the movie, came out more as a snake and someone with ulterior motives. Another thing that bothered me in the book was how in some moments, it seemed like the Tuohy's did have a hidden agenda. I know that they didn't, but I understand how they would seem like boosters to the NCAA.
Although, some of the characters came off a bit standoff-ish in the book, one character whom I loved in the book and the movie was Sean Tuohy. He was a major part of the book, yet he wasn't that much of a main character in the movie. I enjoyed his parts in the book. Also, already having seen the movie, I kept picturing Sean as Tim McGraw. Allow me to have my shallow moment and say that since good ol' Tim is all sorts of yummy, I didn't have not one problem with his expanded role in the book.
Anyway, even though I thought the book was just okay, I absolutely loved the movie. I thought it was just amazing. It made me laugh and cry and then cry a bit more. Amazing true story, with an amazing film to back it up. | | |  | Entertaining Jan 11, 2010 |
In "The Blind Side," the masterful non-fiction writer Michael Lewis tells the fairy tale story of Michael Oher, a young man whom society, family, and school have abandoned and would've bound to be at best a bodyguard of the local drug boss except that God has blessed him with all the attributes of the perfect NFL left tackle -- and thus destined to become one of the most highly-paid individuals in NFL history. Lewis now spins into this Hollywood narrative analysis of the evolution of NFL football, making the book feel sometimes like "Moneyball" (which I think is the best business ever to be published) and sometimes like Nicholas Sparks (it really is hard to match this author for saccharine lameness, but Lewis does put in a very good effort on many a page).
The genesis of the book is in 2003 when the author meets with his elementary school classmate Sean Tuohy, a Taco Bell franchisee who recently decided to adopt a reticent black giant. Here's what we know about Sean Tuohy. He was a basketball player at Old Mississippi State University, and he continues to support heavily its athletics. He's supposedly rich because he lives a very lavish lifestyle (with his own plane called Air Taco), but as a leveraged entrepreneur his finances are also extremely shaky. Being a former athlete who must now spot and seize business opportunities, Sean Tuohy must have noticed the potential of Michael Oher when he suddenly became a classmate of his daughter's at a posh Christian private school. And Sean did have a habit of befriending the poor black athletes at the school. All this is important information that does not of course take anything away from how the Tuohy family adopted Michael, and turned his life around: giving the future football superstar a home and a family, teaching him the manners and the culture that he would need to survive in the world, and bringing in a tutor as well as strategies to ensure that he could get into college. But if these circumstances were enough to warrant an investigation of the NCAA (to see if the Tuohy family had adopted a poor black giant in order to secure a football superstar for their alma mater) then surely Mr. Lewis might have mentioned some of these facts in the beginning to bring some journalism balance to the story.
But these facts come towards the middle and end of the narrative, which by then I've become completely engrossed in this too-good-to-be-true narrative. Learning of these things I became disillusioned by the narrative, and started flipping through what I believed to be the author's flippant excuses for the behavior of the Tuohy family. Yes, it was good and noble and Christian of the Tuohy family to adopt Michael Oher, but if Michael Oher were poor and black and small with AIDS and ADHD, would the family still have adopted him? And towards the end the family contemplated whether it should be their noble mission on this earth to adopt many poor disadvantaged gifted black athletes so that they may have future professional careers.
There's many reasons to like this book. It's an uplifting narrative that is bound to be a Hollywood blockbuster. It's an easy-to-read book that can be finished on a flight from New York to San Franscico. But there's only one problem with the book, and that it's not a Michael Lewis book which is why I began to read this book in the first place.
"Liar's Poker" was a funny and insightful memoir and a powerful condemnation of Wall Street that is still required reading for college undergraduates today. "Moneyball" is business analysis at its very best, and is probably required reading for MBAs today. But "The Blind Side," while entertaining and may become the most lucrative of all the author's books, is by far not his best.
| | |  | Gary Smith Jan 9, 2010 |
| This book is fabulous. I read it after seeing the movie because the movie whet my appetite. If your into football you'll love Michael Lewis's book. I did. Michael Oher's story is an inspirational message to all people. Don't give up on your dreams and aspirations. You'll never know what may come your way. I now watch the Baltimore Ravens games. | | |  | 150 pages too long - really just 3 or 4 good short articles Jan 7, 2010 |
The book is 314 pages, about 150 pages too long. There's 3 or 4 article length stories here. The book is a Frankenstein, with two disparate themes
#1) the evolution of the left tackle in professional football
#2) Pygmalion Redux - an African American's journey from poverty to prominence.
Theme #1 is football clinical - I enjoyed it, but the average reader might start to snooze.
Theme #2 is heartwarming - but there's very little meat on the bone. Michael Oher won't open up to anyone, so the author is forced to present Michael's story from everyone else's viewpoint.
All the participants are wonderfully likeable - no one appears to have any warts.
The book - it's not quite a "Paper Lion" and it's certainly not an "Angela's Ashes".
For comtemporary sports journalism, I would choose Gary Smith's "Going Deep".
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