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The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
By Michael Lewis
W.W. Norton & Co. (Cover: $24.95; Amazon: $13.72)

It's been a long time since a book kept me up through one night and woke me at 3 a.m. the next, pestering me to pick it back up until it was finished. But that's the kind of effect Michael Lewis has.

I almost wrote "Michael Lewis' stories," but that leaves out equally compelling parts of what he does so well book after book.

Sure enough, he tells great stories. A stingier reviewer might say he prob'ly gets his stories handed to him -- after all, he's Michael Lewis of "Moneyball"/"Liar's Poker"/"The New New Thing" fame; people are likely standing at his doorstep like pilgrims at Mecca, waiting to hand him great stories. Even if they are, reading one of his books -- say, "Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life" -- you understand very quickly that his other gifts are what make those stories fly.

The story in "Blind Side," the one that kept me up, is about Michael Oher, at 6'4" and 335 pounds, the biggest Black Cinderella there will ever be in the cannon of sports literature.

Oher (pronounced "oar") is a case study maybe even too extreme for Jonathan Kozol's "Savage Inequalities." When we meet him first, Oher strikes others in his hometown Memphis as a mere cipher -- practically mute, (somehow) melting into the background of life, and likely doomed in a way you imagine Ethiopians in refugee camps are doomed. He'd been on his own since age 10, foraging for food and shelter wherever he could scrounge it up, wearing the same raggedy pair of shorts, a tee shirt and sneakers for god knows how long, and steering as clear of school as he had of Memphis' seriously overburdened social services. The son of an absent (and, later, murdered) father and an alcoholic, drug-addicted mother, and brother to more than 11 brothers and sisters (even Lewis loses count), Michael Oher somehow still had an angel perched on his shoulder.

Not that this angel goes easy on him.

After being plunked down in a snooty white Christian high school on the "right" side of Memphis, in a strange moment of serendipity that smacks of FATE, Oher soon bumps into a rather enlightened school booster, Sean Tuohy. Tuohy and his family end up taking the homeless boy in and, later, adopting him. It's not all rosy, though. Oher is so woefully uneducated, ignorant of what we take as mundane facts of life -- such as why people he's meeting for the first time act so friendly -- that you half-wonder how he's going to make it. He's like an urban Kasper Hauser -- raised in isolated captivity, but landing, in a daze, in the unsuspecting embrace of a concerned and committed family. But, somehow, with a combination of his innocence and everyone's hard work and patience (and nearly two years of studying throughout his days and nights), he does make it.

Oher's life changes so dramatically that you want to just bawl for all the kids in Memphis and everywhere whose lives might also be turned around with such money, guidance and love. (Late in the story, when Oher has already been transformed and moved on to play for Ole Miss, his tutor begins working with some of his teammates -- since she's been moved to Oxford right along with her prize student. One of those tutees thrives under her constant mothering, prompting from this tough, teenaged defensive end a tearful outburst, "Nobody ever loved me till you." oh!)

Oher's story is cast, with a light touch, as one of Destiny, given Lewis' titular subject -- how the understanding about the position of left tackle in the NFL evolved and is now considered, with quarterback, the most important job on the team. It's no X's and O's explanation, as Lewis uses the narratives of several significant figures to tell the story of that metamorphosis -- men like Bill Walsh, whose inventive short-pass offensive attack made protecting the QB's back a No. 1 priority; early prototypes at the slot, like Anthony Munoz, John Ayers, Steve Wallace and Will Wolford; and, perhaps along with (former Buckeye great) Orlando Pace, the current epitome of the pass-rush-stopping "freak of nature," Jonathan Ogden. Along the way we hear great insights from a variety of NFL and college FB insiders such as Lawrence Taylor, Bill Parcells, Bill Polian, etc. -- definitely one of the bennies Lewis gets from his connections and rep that lesser writers would have to kill for.

One of Lewis' talents is his ability to handle the metaphoric arc of his stories without using them like an LT axe over the head. (A gripe that might be coming out of my frustration with the bad writing I'm forced to endure here at J-School....) "The Blind Side" is written in such a "talking" style, its sentences showing such a confidence and comfort with language and nuance, it's no wonder I'm up in the middle of the night feeling so tickled. One of Lewis' best qualities, and the reason sports strikes me as his natural subject matter, is that his writing is always in service of the story. To reference a literary figure beloved by Lewis' Oxford, Mississippi subjects, Lewis has killed his darlin's. No showing off. No posturing. The story's the thing.

"The Blind Side" is well worth the night-and-a-half I stayed up to read it.