Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1148215 in Books
• Published on: 1995-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Library Journal
Katz (Home Fires, LJ 5/15/92), who spent 17 months among Nike's senior management during a tumultuous period in the company's history, offers a meticulous, well-written report about the high-pressure decision-making behind Nike's famous marketing campaigns. Lamentably, however, he glosses over controversial issues like the substandard wages paid by the company's Third World manufacturing operations. And he declines to draw interpretive conclusions about Nike's domineering influence over college and professional sports management. This lack of critical perspective constitutes a serious flaw in an otherwise diligent work of corporate reportage. Still, readers will find this a more balanced and up-to-date treatment than J.B. Strasser's Swoosh (LJ 1/92). Recommended for general business collections.
A.G. Wright, Harvard Coll. Lib., Cambridge, Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-The rise of Phil Knight and his Nike empire began with his trip to a Japanese shoe factory in 1963. Joined by Bill Bowerman, his old track coach and an inveterate seeker of a better running shoe, he began to import Tiger running shoes and sell them at high-school track meets. In 1966, Bowerman designed his own product, which was made by the Japanese firm, and in 1972 the first Nikes were introduced. Katz examines the enterprise historically, as a cultural phenomenon and as a multimillion-dollar company. Students seeking information about successful businesses in our global economy, marketing, research and development, or retailing will be profitably engaged by this text.
Barbara Hawkins, Oakton High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Blessed by Nike CEO Phil Knight, Katz tackles, with admiration tempered by journalistic inquisitiveness, the question of the company's successes and failures. Personalities are sketched but not overanalyzed; he examines all aspects of Nike--the campus in Beaverton, its Far East factories, retailers, the symbiotic relationship between athletes and the company, and its antiestablishment company culture. Much is made of the pros who, in the 1980s, enabled Nike's growth, including Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and Andre Agassi. And much is made, too, of the company's preoccupation with image. Barbara Jacobs