This book is different from the movie, I think for the better.

It is a mixture of the history of defense tackle, and alternating perspectives of Liane Tuoey, Sean Tuoey, Michael oer’s coaches, Michael’s childhood and college experience (not in the movie), and of course, Michael himself.

The Blind Side is a good movie with good performances, but by making Liane the protagonist instead of Michael it descends into white savior tropes. It was interesting however how much of the dialogue is lifted from actual dialogue from the book.

I was very happy to learn that in this case, the movie followed the book very well. The book went into a lot of detail about the economics of the left tackle position (if you saw or read Moneyball, it's the same author) and discussed money much more than you got from the movie. It taught me a bit about football and the evolution of the game--knowledge that I was please to pass on to my football-loving husband. I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy a book about football so much :)

Again, for me at least, Michael Lewis proves he is one of the great living nonfiction writers (right there with McPhee, Remnick and Cramer). Even the weakest chapters in this book were compelling and infinitely readable. I think Lewis' appeal is his ability to seamlessly crossover. His books about sports can be equally considered economic pieces. His articles about politics are fundamentally about understanding people and places. His books about Wall Street, can best be understood as ontological works of the late 20th/early 21st centuries; focusing on greed, power, and competition.

The Blind Side features two story lines, one traces the evolution of offensive football since the early 1980's specifically the way it reacted to the way Hall of Fame revolutionized the Outside Linebacker position was played. Thanks to Taylor's prowess at rushing the Quarterback, the Left Tackle(who protects the QB's blind side) quickly became one of the most important, and highest-paid positions on the football field.

The second storyline focuses on Michael Oher, who has all the psyical gifts that NFL scouts look for in the prototypical Left Tackle, the problem: can Michael make the grades necessary to play college football? We follow Michael on his journey from impoverished upbringing, to his enrollement at an elite christian school, where he is taken in by a white family, to his eventual enrollment at Ole Miss. Along the way, we are given a glimpse into the often predatory recruiting process that top prospects must negotiate.

Michael is projected to be a first round pick in April's NFL draft.

There have only been a handful of great books on Football published in the past 20 years, and this is one of them.

You’ve seen the movie, now read the book. Michael Lewis truly has a knack for taking an ordinary subject that’s been endlessly profiled, such as the rags to riches story of a big black football player from the south, and peeling away unseen layers to reveal surprising depths and nuance. The opening, which solemnly recounts Joe Theismann’s gruesome injury at the hands of Lawrence Taylor, is a perfect introduction to “The Blind Side” as a football term, but also lays the groundwork for exploring the enigmatic Michael Oher, who is rescued from poverty in the worst part of Memphis and given the chance to succeed at football and life.

Ryan Shaw
Mrs. Marlow
English 4
22 December 2017
tThe Blind Side is a feel-good story about the life of an athlete from the projects of Memphis. Beginning life and until he is in high school he slept on the floor on a deflated air mattress. He lived like this until he was discovered and brought to a school to play sports because of his 6’6 300-pound figure. Not only was he discovered to play sports, he was discovered by a family that decides to take him in as if he was theirs.
tI gave this a two star because even though I really enjoyed the story I thought there were way too many facts in this book. The story about his journey through life is great but I got extremely bored and confused throughout the book because of all the statistics. The actual story is really inspiring though. I found his struggle through life really moving. It’s crazy how he went from nothing to having a net worth of $20 million. Having a school like Briarcrest would be really cool because of the help they provided Michael on his academic and athletic journey.

Lewis writes two stories here. One is interesting. The other is mildly intriguing and probably not as a big a story as it seems.

When telling the story of Michael Oher, a poor black kid from Memphis adopted by a loaded white family and the journey he takes from uncommunicative, unschooled, untrusting child to a succesful lineman starring at Ole Miss it's a good story.

When writing about the emergence of the left tackle position in the NFL it was hard not to skip passages.

Left tackle is an key position and the excerpts from players and coaches is interesting. Reading about the gruesome ways Lawrence Taylor destroyed people is great.

But it's tedious and in the end it's hard to argue it's important. There's no real comparison to other ways the game has evolved.

The Michael story left me uncomfortable. As great a story as his is (and it's still going - when his NFL draft approaches, Lewis-hype will ensure you know he's available), significant ethical questions are raised by the conduct of his adoptive family.

Lewis correctly raises the questions, though he had little choice after the NCAA launched an investigation into the subject.

But he never attempts to answer them.

And his portrayal of the Tuohy family never wavers from supportive. Lewis never tackles their involvement, preferring to leave the questioning to others, and in doing so he is doing the story a disfavour.

Incredible story that got turned into a film starring Sandra bullock. About a young 16 year old , 140 kg black kid basically from the equivalent of a council estate in England, who gets picked up by a lovely upper middle class white family who help him become a professional American footballer!
Unbelievable story. Must read if you are into sports and i never knew anything about American football and feel like I understand it so much better now. Here are the best bits:

Parcells believed that even in the NFL, a lot of players were more concerned with seeming to want to win than with actually winning, and that many of them did not know the difference. What they wanted, deep down, was to keep their jobs, make their money, and go home. Lawrence layior wanted to win. He expected more of himself on the field than a coach would dare to ask of any player.

Taylor moved around a lot, to confuse the defense, but he and his coach were happiest when he came from his own right side and the quarterback's left.
"The big reason I put him over there," said Bill Parcells, "is the right side is the quarterback's blind side, since most quarterbacks are right-handed. And no one wants to get his ass knocked off from the back side." Lawrence Taylor was more succinct: "Why the hell would I want to come from where he can see me?" But then he added: "It wasn't really called the blind side when I came into the league. It was called the right side. It became the blind side after I started knocking people's heads off?"

Theismann prides himself on his ability to stand in the pocket and disregard his fear. He thinks this quality is a prerequisite in a successful NFL quarterback.

He was a person for whom the clock was always running out, the game was always tied, and the ball was always in his hands. He'd played the role for so long that he'd become the role.

A miserable childhood in the worst part of Memphis was typically excellent emotional preparation for what was required on a football defense: it made you angry, it made you aggressive, it made you want to tear someone's head off. The NFL was loaded with players who had mined a loveless, dysfunctional childhood for sensational acts of violence.

The performance of Walsh's quarterbacks suggested a radical thought: that in the most effective passing attack in the NFL, and on one of the most successful teams in the history of pro football, the quarterbacks were fungible. The system was the star. Walsh had imported into pro football the spirit of a Japanese auto plant— Total Quality Management. A lot of people in and around pro football were uncomfortable with the idea, and the benching of Joe Montana, for them, was the final straw.

"Force equals mass times acceleration," Coach Hugh Freeze liked to say. "And when Michael's mass hits you at Michael's speed, it's just an amazing and unexpected force.

THERE WAS A new force in Michael Oher's life: a woman paying extremely close attention to him who had an eye for detail, a nose for trouble, the heart of a lion, and the will of a storm trooper. A mother.

She had watched her own penniless husband turn his athletic triumphs into business success and, indeed, a happy life. But there was nothing inevitable about the process; you needed to know how to translate one narrow kind of success into another, much broader kind.

tTheir's not to make reply,
tTheir's not to reason why,
tTheir's but to do and die:
tInto the valley of Death
tRode the six hundred

NFL hadn't yet begun to levy big fines for fights, and Wallace had taken full advantage of the freebies. He now had a reputation as one of the league's dirtiest linemen-because he started so many fights. "I thought that's how it had to be," he said. "I had to fight if I was going to make it. And I had some folks to feed. And when you have some folks to feed you have a whole different mentality."
That really was how Wallace thought about these beasts bent on killing Joe Montana: you go by me and my family goes hungry.

"Once your body gets engaged with a guy, he can very easily use a counter—once you ve stopped his initial move, he pushes off. That's why you can't stop moving your feet."

If Doleman established his ability to knock Wallace flat on his back—to run right over him-he'd force Wallace to plant his feet early, to brace himself. Planted feet doom a left tackle. Planted feet are slow feet. If he plants his feet, Wallace knows, Doleman will see that his feet are planted-and then he'll go right back to his speed rush. When a left tackle plants his feet, he gives the pass rusher a half step head start in his race to the quarterback. That half step might be the difference between a productive Joe Montana and a Joe Montana being carried off the field on a stretcher.

when Friedrich Engels coined the term false consciousness" to describe the inability of the working class to understand the nature of its oppression,

He played basketball ten and twelve hours a day, and grew ever more certain that he was destined to be the next Michael Jordan.

Of course, Michael could sense his own swelling mass, but only by its effects. He was pleasantly shocked when one day, while wrestling, he just picked up a kid as if he weighed nothing and hurled him across the yard. On the other hand, he was no longer winning the foot races against the other kids—but at least he was still running them. They'd go out into the turning lane on Danny Thomas Boulevard like they always did, but now he'd be given a head start. He devoted so much time and energy to defying his own size that it couldn't help but yield results. Even as he became one of the biggest human beings in Hurt Village, he remained quick and agile. He willed himself to be graceful—to remain a little man, inside a big man's body. Later, college coaches who came to watch him would see a freak of nature. But where had nature left off, and nurture taken over? It was, as always, hard to say.

He'd had no interaction with them before this. Now as he studied them he judged them ill-designed for survival. Astonishingly prone to exaggerating the severity of the most trivial illness or injury, they were forever racing off to doctors and hospitals, as if they were about to die.
"They'd get a twisted ankle or something and they're walking around school with a boot!" Michael said. "I was like, What are y all doing? You got to just walk it off!'"

THE TUOHY MOST directly responsible for the transformation of Michael Oher, Leigh Anne had the most trouble ignoring his implications. "Look at him," she would say, whenever Michael stood more than about ten feet away. "He has everything: integrity, ambition, and a future." Then she'd think a moment, with the critical detachment of a sculptor whose work was nearly, but not quite, finished. "The only thing he needs now is to learn to give."

کتابش رو نخوندم اما فیلمش رو دیدم و یکی از بهترین فیلم هایی بود که تا حالا دیدم و سر شار از مفاهیم آموزشی ، تربیتی ، انسانی و روانشناسیه دیدن این فیلم رو به همه دوستان پیشنهاد می کنم داستان در مورد زندگی واقعی مایکل اور نوجون امریکاییه بی خانمانیست که توسط یک خانواده ثروتمند و انساندوست مورد سرپرستی و حمایت قرار می گیرد ...

Unorganized and totally inaccessible to someone who doesn’t know the most about football.

The Blind Side is a book about a homeless teenager who gets adopted by a married couple who sees him on the side of the road and gives him a ride and a place to stay. While he is with them he grows fond of them he starts to attend a fancy mainly white Americans go there he only has a couple pairs of clothes.
He starts playing football but he does not have the best grades in the world, his major is protection. His adopted parents use that to an advantage and he become’s really good at the sport . The family loves him and he loves them. He is in a place where everyone loves him

Warning: plot spoilers and discussion follow below.

The protagonists are the people who adopt him are pretty much his whole community.

The only antagonists are the streets he is trying to get away from. By the streets I mean the town where he used to live.

Main conflict

He lived with a mom who didn’t even know who he was he pretty much didn’t have an actuall family he had to fend for himself. The main conflict is trying to get his grades up so he can attend a college. One of his parents wants him to go to the university of Tennesse , the other wants him to go to the university of ole miss. But that’s not the major conflict in the story.

On the merits of the story alone, I enjoyed this book. Lewis is a very good writer, and he is able to tell a compelling story and educate the less knowledgeable without coming off as condescending, which is more difficult than it sounds. The story of Michael Oher is compelling (and ongoing), and it's hard not to root for him.

That said, I have my suspicions about the altruism at the heart of the story. There are too many questionable motivations floating about, although, to Lewis's credit, he does acknowledge them. As much as Lewis tries to drive the point home that the Tuohy family are just generous, kind people, I do find the story of Michael's recruitment and subsequent (spoiler alert) commitment to Ole Miss very suspect. Consider the facts: 1)Ole Miss is far from a college football powerhouse, even (especially?) playing in the super competitive SEC; 2)Oher was recruited by literally every major college program in the country, many of which could have afforded Oher greater opportunities for national exposure and better quality education; 3)Ole Miss very sketchily hired Michael's high school football coach to their staff immediately before or after (I can't remember the exact timeline) Michael committed to Ole Miss; 4)The Tuohys are well known alumni and benefactors to Ole Miss; 5)Michael Lewis is an old friend of Sean Tuohy.

Taken individually, these factors can be dismissed as coincidence. Together, it adds up to something fishy. I simply don't believe the Tuohy's motives were pure in adopting Michael, and I don't like the way that Lewis casually brushes off the idea that this feel good story could have arose from more sinister origins. However, that said, he doesn't take the Michael Moore route and does, at the very least, address these issues, and it is a heck of a story. Maybe it's not the made for Hollywood story Lewis presents it as, but, then again, neither are most made for Hollywood stories.