Everyone knows "Godzilla," the 1954 film that introduced Japan's most famous monster to the world. But the name of its director, Ishiro Honda, was for a long time only mentioned by foreign critics and fans in passing, if at all.

Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa, by Steve Ryfle and Ed Godziszewski.336 pagesWESLEYAN, Nonfiction.

Even today some write of him as "Inoshiro" Honda, a decades-old error that stubbornly lives on. If Honda had become a world-famous auteur like his long-time friend and Toho colleague Akira Kurosawa, the world would have sooner learned the correct reading for his first name.