Shoe Dog Study Guide

Knight grew up in a middle-class household in Portland, Oregon, where he attended high school. Following high school, Knight attended the University of Oregon before attending Stanford for his MBA. After graduating from Stanford, Knight went on a trip around the world and visited many countries, including Japan. While in Japan, Knight pitched himself as an American distributor for Onitsuka, a notable shoe company. Onitsuka accepted his deal, which led to Knight starting his first company: Blue Ribbon. Over the next two decades, Blue Ribbon became a notable shoe company in the United States. However, in the early 1970s, Blue Ribbon and Onitsuka had a falling out. After a legal battle, the two companies went their separate ways, and Knight turned Blue Ribbon into Nike. Knight then spent the rest of the 1970s turning Nike into one of America’s most notable athletic brands. Then, in 1980, Knight turned Nike into a publicly traded company, netting Knight $178 million. Since then, Nike has only grown, and Knight’s income has increased with it. Knight is one of America’s top 20 wealthiest men, and Nike is now a world-wide brand. In 2016, Knight released his memoir, Shoe Dog. Shoe Dog is the story of Nike, from its origins as Blue Ribbon to the company it is today.

Shoe Dog begins a little over a decade after the end of World War II. Knight notes early in the book that he felt emotional while traveling in Japan as an American during that time period. Notably, Japan allied itself with Germany and Italy in World War II, and infamously bombed the United States in the attack on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor is often thought of as the inciting incident that led America into World War II with Japan as its enemy. Toward the end of the war, the United States dropped two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, decimating hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives, most of whom were civilians, in an instant. When Knight leaves for Japan, his family is worried because there is still animosity between the United States and Japan. However, when Knight arrives in Japan, he sees young people like him who want to move on from the war and start a new, better world. 

Shoe Dog is filled with references to other literature, religious texts, and philosophy. While traveling around the world, Phil Knight immersed himself in other cultures by reading their most famous written works. In particular, Knight studied the Buddhist concept of Zen. Zen places an emphasis on meditation and intuition, while also insisting that the self is an illusion. The foundational work describing Zen in Japanese culture is the Kana Shōbōgenzō, the commonly accepted title of the written works of Eihei Dogen, a 13th-century Buddhist monk. This seminal work is known for introducing Zen—previously a Chinese practice—to Japan. Additionally, Shoe Dog is related to a number of other notable memoirs. Although Phil Knight’s name is on the cover, Shoe Dog was ghostwritten by J.R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer Prize recipient. Moehringer also ghostwrote Prince Harry’s recent 2023 memoir, Spare, and tennis star Andre Agassi’s memoir, Open.