In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.
In 1962, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed $50 from his father and created a company with a simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost athletic shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his lime green Plymouth Valiant, Knight grossed $8,000 his first year.
Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion. In an age of startups, Nike is the ne plus ultra of all startups, and the swoosh has become a revolutionary, globe-spanning icon, one of the most ubiquitous and recognizable symbols in the world today.
But Knight, the man behind the swoosh, has always remained a mystery. Now, for the first time, in a memoir that is candid, humble, gutsy, and wry, he tells his story, beginning with his crossroads moment. At 24, after backpacking around the world, he decided to take the unconventional path, to start his own business—a business that would be dynamic, different.
Knight details the many risks and daunting setbacks that stood between him and his dream—along with his early triumphs. Above all, he recalls the formative relationships with his first partners and employees, a ragtag group of misfits and seekers who became a tight-knit band of brothers. Together, harnessing the transcendent power of a shared mission, and a deep belief in the spirit of sport, they built a brand that changed everything.
Jason Onyimbo –
1984 addresses totalitarianism. We are taken on a journey into a world where it is the only system of rule. We learn that the people under such a rule feel powerless and too divided to fight back. So, they simply accept whatever they are told.
Their lives are pre-tailored to suit the system, and it is how they must live until they die. Such a system creates soulless or broken people with zero identity or independence, which keeps the ruling class ever – powerful. Totalitarianism is gross oppression and must never be allowed to take hold in any system, whether a nation, a classroom, or a family.
A government such as this feeds off the submission of the masses and assures itself of more control by instilling fear through scare tactics and mental domination. Such a system operates on lies, a subversion of truth and history to keep the populace in check. It is a perversion to the usual way people are supposed to express their rights to have freedom, facts of history, and truth.
Totalitarianism makes a clear distinction between the rich and the poor. The poor believe that such a lowly status is the best they can get in life. Their reality is warped; rather than focusing on their financial lack, they instead work against each other.
This style of government is targeted at the public’s psyche as it seeks to control them without applying physical pressure. Instead, it breaks down individuals from the inside out, robbing them of the will to question, rebel, or harbor any thoughts that aren’t sanctioned or informed by the ruling class.
Chief, the NuriaStore bookseller –
If science fiction, sociology, political fiction, and dystopia are literary bread for your teeth, then the number one title is undoubtedly 1984.
In a post-atomic scenario that to say disturbing is an understatement, the superpower of Oceania is governed by a totalitarian party headed by the so-called Big Brother. Shivering down my spine.