'Japan's Favorite Mon-Star' Back on the Marquee

Steve Ryfle is a former Los Angeles Times reporter. Fifty years ago Godzilla, Japan's giant radioactive reptile, made his first film appearance. Japanese director Ishiro Honda made the original Godzilla movie in 1954. The film is coming back to theaters in a new uncut version. Ryfle's book about Godzilla is Japan's Favorite Mon-Star: The Unauthorized Biography of 'The Big G.'

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, spent six years researching America's nuclear weapons. In Command and Control, he details explosions, false attack alerts and accidentally dropped bombs.

In the Japanese original, he was a thinly disguised symbol of the atom bomb, but in later films he fought other giant monsters and even space aliens. The latest Godzilla is directed by Gareth Edwards.