10 books like Friday Night Lights

Galeano was no ordinary sportswriter. He was also a radical journalist, revisionist historian, and clear-eyed social critic whose work redefined modern Latin America in the minds of readers worldwide. In Soccer in Sun and Shadow, the Uruguayan author explores the meaning of soccer far beyond yellow cards and defensive strategies. In a series of short chapters, some no more than a page, Galeano illuminates the Beautiful Game’s legends, known and forgotten, from Maradona and Pele to the match that ended with 44 penalty kicks but whose results no one can quite remember. He is at his best when writing about how players of color from the favelas of Latin American added flare and rhythm to a hitherto stodgy old European game. Lyrical and learned, loving and elegiac, Soccer in Sun and Shadow stands as perhaps the greatest book on sports ever written.  

Zirin, the first sports columnist in the 150-year history of The Nation magazine, is arguably America’s best sportswriter, not just because of his fine prose style and encyclopedic knowledge of the contemporary sporting scene, but also due to his deep understanding of the connections between sports and politics. His biography of the legendary Brown, the most dominant player to ever carry a football, is no mere act of hagiography. While acknowledging Brown’s unrivaled achievements on the field as well as his role as a leader in the Black Power movement and his trailblazing work as a Hollywood icon, Zirin also presents a frank picture of the Cleveland Browns legend’s troubling behavior toward women and his recent opportunistic support of Trump. The result is a thought-provoking, no-holds-barred template that all sports biographies should strive to follow.  

Jim Bouton broke baseball’s code of silence to write this tell-all memoir about life in the Major Leagues.

What’s shocking is how good it is: how fun, readable, and thoughtful. There are salacious stories about drug use, Mickey Mantle, and many varieties of barbaric and knuckleheaded behavior.

But the heart of the story is about a fading star trying to reinvent himself as a knuckleballer—and then, in a much later addendum, coping with the death of a child.

This ballplayer can write.

Exley’s “fictional autobiography” charts with comic brilliance his struggles with mental illness and alcoholism, his obsession with USC classmate Frank Gifford, the golden boy of college football, whose successes and failures as a member of pro football’s New York Giants, come to be a way for Exley to look past his own inadequacies, so much did he invest in and identify with Gifford as he watched each Sunday from the bleachers of the Polo Grounds. He writes: “Each time I heard the roar of the crowd, it roared in my ears as much for me as him; that roar was not only a promise of my fame, it was its unequivocal assurance.” In fact, it is from the depths of despair that his fantasies helped distract him from, that Exley finds actual fame and salvation in sitting down to write this book. We can all be grateful that he did.

If you want a break from fantasy and sci-fi, and you love a book with morally grey characters, then this is it.

Beartown is a town that survives on hockey. The kids play it, the grown-ups work in anything related, and just like in sports, both sides consider themselves the good side in every action they take.

We follow the manager of the hockey club as he must make impossible decisions, then the players, each making their own mistakes. We see villains grow from a place that we can understand, and we see good people making bad calls because no one can be perfect all the time.

And most importantly, we see how sometimes, no choice is the right choice. Especially for the victim.

While the connection between Ponyboy Curtis and Cherry Valance never goes beyond a simple crush on Ponyboy’s part, I would argue that their connection is memorable, unlikely, and life-changing. The fact that they even find each other and are able to talk as honestly as they do is surprising and heartwarming. In the end, they show each other that their social groups aren’t as different as the others might think—they all have problems and redeeming qualities. Cherry tells Ponyboy that not all Socs are like the ones who beat up Johnny. S.E. Hinton takes the romantic notion one step further and adds to the impossibility and heartbreak of it all when Cherry confesses to Ponyboy that, if things were different, she could fall in love with Dally, one of Ponyboy’s friends who is a fellow greaser. In the end, this is a life-changing book for me because it, along with… show more.

This book isn’t about sports. But it has that small-town vibe that fills a craving you might have. More than that, this book is about knowing yourself and finding that one person who fits with the jagged pieces of your own puzzle. Dessen is a queen of young adult swoon, but what I think she does to perfection is capture the emotions surrounding friendship. This book hits the very core of why everyone needs that one person.

Set on a small college campus, this book explores personal relationships and the human spirit through the story of Henry Skrimshander as he navigates his way from high school ballplayer to college baseball phenom with life throwing him and his friends curveball after curveball along the way. As a former high school and college player, I could very much relate to this book, which evokes the unique ethos of small college life. The story and characters are memorable, but it is Harbach’s creation of a time and place that really moved me. A literary masterpiece.

One of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century, James is best known for his works of history and Marxist philosophy. His book on cricket showed me something I intuited but did not truly understand: that sports are themselves deeply meaningful, and just as deserving of serious study as any other phenomenon or event. James narrates his own experience playing cricket in his native Trinidad in the early twentieth century and his lifelong passion for the game. More, he explores its artistry, its joys and disappointments, and, ultimately, its capacity to explain the nature of race, ethnicity, and power in the Caribbean and British Empire.

I loved this book because it fearlessly profiles a certain type of hypocrisy in our culture through the experiences of Billy Lynn and his fellow soldiers of the Bravo Squad. They’re reluctant war heroes on an unwanted victory tour stop at a Dallas Cowboys game. I identified with Billy as an everyman with a challenging background. I felt it was a powerful juxtaposition of the price we ask some to pay to support our way of life that is cluttered with banality.

I could feel his pain and grief over the losses he’s experienced, and I wanted him to be cared for with empathy and understanding. Instead, I was repulsed by what our culture has to offer; using Billy and his fellow soldiers as props to celebrate ourselves.