Sony: The Private Life

Named one of the best business books of the year (by Fortune and Newsweek), SONY is the "intimate biography of one of the world's leading electronics giants" (San Francisco Chronicle) as well as one of the most fascinating and complex of all corporate stories. Drawing on his unmatched expertise in Japanese culture and on unique, unlimited access to Sony's inner sanctum, John Nathan traces Sony's evolution from its inauspicious beginnings amid Tokyo's bomb-scarred ruins to its current worldwide success. "Richly detailed and revealing" (Wall Street Journal), the book examines both the outward successes and, as never before, the mysterious inner workings that have always characterized this company's top ranks. The result is "a different kind of business book, showing how personal relationships shaped one of the century's great global corporations" (Fortune).

John Nathan, the Takashima Professor of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of a definitive biography of the novelist Yukio Mishima and has translated the novels of both Mishima and the Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe into English. He is alsoan Emmy Award-winning filmmaker. John Nathanlives in Santa Barbara, California.