Shattered Sword is a new, definitive account of the Battle of Midway, focusing primarily (but by no means exclusively) on the Japanese side of the battle. Throughout the book, the authors make extensive usage of new Japanese primary and secondary sources that have not been utilized in prior studies. These include the official Japanese War History series (Senshi Sosho), the translated carrier air group action reports of the four Japanese carriers involved in the battle, the comprehensive Japanese casualty figures found in Sawachi Hisae's groundbreaking volume on the battle (Midowei Kaisen Kiroku), and many others. The result is an account that is grounded less on first-hand personal accounts (although these are found in plenty as well), and more on concrete operational data. This shift in focus has led to many important, and potentially provocative, re-interpretations of the conventional wisdom on the battle.