Read The Times’ scathing, prescient review of Michael Lewis’ ‘The Blind Side’

On Monday, NFL veteran Michael Oher filed a petition in a Tennessee court alleging that his caretakers, Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy — the heroes of Michael Lewis’ 2006 book “The Blind Side” and the 2009 film adaptation starring Sandra Bullock — had never officially adopted him, instead arranging for a conservatorship that deprived him of revenue. Sean Tuohy swiftly refuted the lawsuit’s claims, defending the conservatorship and calling the suggestion that the Tuohys “enriched themselves” at Oher’s expense “insulting.” The reception of Lewis’ book about a white couple who took in a poor, Black, talented teenager was relatively mixed for the nonfiction superstar. “The essential message,” he wrote, “is that poor black children matter, and are seen as worth helping, not because of the content of their characters but because of their physical prowess.” In 2014, Almond expanded on his analysis of the sport and its injustices in his own book, “Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto.” Read the full Times review of “The Blind Side” below. Oher recognizes the ulterior motives swirling around him: “He didn’t go so far as to treat Leigh Anne with suspicion but, as Leigh Anne put it, ‘With me and Sean I can see him thinking, If they found me lying in a gutter and I was going to be flipping burgers at McDonald’s, would they really have had an interest in me?’ ” This question is never answered.