Sony's rags to riches story began in Tokyo in 1945 as the nuclear dust began to settle on the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The founding fathers of the consumer electronics giant, Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita, complemented each other brilliantly.
Ibuka was the engineering guru and Morita the marketing genius.
A corporation that would help millions enjoy music - on transistors, tape recorders, walkmans and CD players - had its own Lennon and McCartney.
More than 50 years later, a Harris poll in 1998 showed Sony was the brand name best known and respected by the US consumer.
Annoyed with the assumption that "Made In Japan" meant cheap imitation, Morita was inspired by a visit to the Philips' plant in Eindhoven in 1953.
The firm was based in a small country, Holland, but the brand was recognised and respected for quality products worldwide.
On his return to Japan he proposed a change of name for his company which could be pronounced and recognised outside Japan. Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, or Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Company, became Sony, based on the Latin word sonus for sound.
John Nathan has written an authoritive and easy-to-read history of one of the world's most powerful and influential corporations. This is the amazing story of a tiny band of samurai beating the odds to get to the top of the world. Engineering passion and business vision fuelled the Sony leadership but ruthlessness played its part as well. Morita's chosen heir, Norio Ohga began his career as a classical musician, but when CBS/ Sony Records became his baby, teenagers and young adults were in his market sights.
Was there a contradiction between his devotion to classical music and pushing his label's acts to the top of the charts? "Beethoven," he said, "will always be Beethoven. And then there is business. I have a switch I can throw as I move back and forth between worlds."
Conquering the US was a prime objective for Sony. In 1989 it acquired Columbia Pictures Entertainment for a total cost of just under $6 billion. "Japan Invades Hollywood!" was the cover headline in Newsweek.
Five years later Sony announced a $2.7 billion write-off of its prestige investment. The stock fell in Tokyo, New York and London.
But Ohga did not have to resign. Membership of the Hollywood club was more important for Sony than a mere financial disaster.
However, Nathan loses the plot a little in his narrative. He becomes too tangled up in boardroom politics, particularly when dealing with the US operations. He is too close to his subject to be able to offer a critical overview and there is a lack of context - the reader is left none the wiser as to how the Land of the Rising Sun radiates economic power so brightly.
