Coming this spring, the long-awaited screen version of the book that has sold over half a million copies Friday Night Lights is the best-selling story of life in the football-driven town of Odessa, Texas, and how the town's passion for the team inspires - and sometimes shatters - the young men who wear the Panthers uniform. Socially and racially divided, Odessa's fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the oil business. In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true. With frankness and compassion, Bissinger chronicles one of the Panthers' dramatic seasons and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and the teenagers who are part of it. Now a major film from Universal Pictures, directed by Peter Berg and starring Billy Bob Thornton. This special tie-in edition features a bound-in Reader's Guide.