The last time I picked up a book on the Battle of Midway, it was Jon Parshall and Tony Tully's Shattered Sword. Considering Shattered Sword being very high regarded and enjoying nearly a "definitive" status, it sets quite a standard to those that follow.
With that said, I think, Peter C. Smith's Midway: Dauntless Victory may have just reached that high standard.
He adopted an approach where he presented all angles of the battle, American and Japanese, new findings and old (some proven wrong) theories. Take the misconception that the Japanese carriers' decks were packed full of aircraft for example, which had since been proven impossible by Jon Parshall and Tony Tully, he continued to express some of the American pilots' views from their recollections that they saw the Japanese decks busy with activity. "Who are we to deny them that memory, misguided or not?", Smith noted. He quoted Ray Wagner, noting that he was merely trying to write "impartially, without fear nor favor, as an historian should".
This review is published only in part on World War Two Zone; for the entire review, please see:
WW2DB: Midway: Dauntless Victory
Needless to say, this is a book that I will recommend.
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