Sony: the Private Life, by John Nathan (HarperCollins Business, £8.99 in UK)

Anyone who has had a Walkman will be intrigued by this study of the global giant, written by biographer and translator of Yukio Mishima. It is a tale of creativity and dogged determination which mirrors that of post-war Japan; but with one eye on his general reader, quickly bored by talk of growth, internal conflict and take-overs, Nathan crams his narrative with down-to-earth detail: how the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Company changed its name to a happy - if unlikely - blend of the Latin word for sound, sonus, and the English expression "sonny-boy"; how the Walkman was created in four days for one of the top brass. Most vivid of all, however, are his portraits of the central players: the aristocratic Akio Morita, born into a wealthy sake dynasty; Norio Ohga, operatic baritone and orchestral conductor; the engineer Akira Higuchi, one of seven who started at Sony in 1945.