This month's Shelf pick is Shoe Dog by Phil Knight: the founding of Nike told by a man who spent two decades one bad phone call from losing everything. Page count pending. A memoir about betting the house that is honest about the bill the family paid.
May 2026 pick. Last updated 19 August 2026.
Why this one
Most business memoirs are victory laps. This one keeps stopping to admit the price: the missed dinners, the son who grows up around a father who is always half at the office. Read it as a book about risk and family rather than a book about shoes and it turns into an argument worth having.
Knight tells you what the crazy idea cost him. The club's job is to say out loud what ours costs us.
The pace planner
Work out when you finish
Set your start date and your honest nightly minutes. It saves in this browser only.
- Per night
- 12 pages
- Per week
- 84 pages
- You finish
- Saturday, October 1025 nights, about 4 weeks
We have not verified a page count for this edition, so the planner starts from your own copy. Change the number to match the book in your hand.
How long will it take at twenty minutes a night?
Page count pending for the edition we link, so we are not guessing the number of nights. and the middle chapters read fastest, because the whole thing is one long cash-flow cliffhanger. The twenty minutes a night system.
The discussion sheet
Dad's Book Club
Discussion sheet
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
The Shelf. May 2026.
If you only ask one
Knight calls his venture his crazy idea. What is yours, and what has keeping it or dropping it cost?
- Knight borrows to the edge every year for two decades. Would you have slept? What is your actual tolerance for that kind of risk?
- Bowerman cares about the shoe, not the company. Which of the two men do you want working for you, and which do you want to be?
- The book is honest that the family absorbed the cost. Was that a fair trade, and who got to decide?
- Knight hires misfits and cranks nobody else would keep. When have you seen that pay off, and when have you seen it wreck a team?
- The Buttface meetings are shouting matches that end in agreement. Does your work have a room like that? Should it?
- He treats the Onitsuka betrayal as the making of Nike. Which betrayal made you?
- Knight barely explains the Nike name or the swoosh. What does that tell you about how much brand mattered at the start?
- He says he wanted to leave a mark. What is the difference between leaving a mark and being remembered?
- If your kid told you tomorrow they were doing this with their twenties, what would you actually say?
dadsbookclub.com · May 2026
If you liked this
Hatchet
Gary Paulsen · The Kitchen Table
The same month at the kitchen table, sized for a kid. A boy, a crash, a hatchet: the read-together that makes an 8 to 12 ask for one more chapter.
What to read after it
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
For the dad who wants the same nerves with the sentiment removed.
Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar
For the dad who liked the deal-making more than the running.
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