Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: Russia's War with Japan Book

There is, still, a lesson to be learned from this war. Possibly more than one.
Russia: an aging Imperial power, abundant with decadent, idle nobility, power and space as well as a simmering ocean of discontent amongst the underclasses, and worst of all, a military that was strong on the outside, rotten on the inside. The Russian armed forces were, in most senses, an anachronism. Their last successful military outing, against Turkey twenty five years prior to their war with Japan, while successful, has been won against an even more doddering, corrupt, decaying and elderly empire than was their own. And the Turks military might was more outdated and anachronistic than was the Russian. And, for Russia, worse of all was the absolute void in any intellectual endeavor devoted to military/strategic affairs. Russia, at least her leaders, were perfectly accepting of simply resting upon their power, wealth and past glories.
A frightening allegory to the modern United States could easily be made here...lesson number one.
Japan: A young, vibrant, recently united people, exuberantly racing into modernity full steam ahead, embracing industrialization and eagerly absorbing any bit of military and strategic knowledge she can get her hands on. Looked at from this perspective, one can be forgiven for viewing this wars outcome as being pre-ordained.
Author Connaughton describes the background, strategies, and narrates the combat of the war itself in a workmanlike fashion. While, as one reviewer relates, he does not put any passion into his writing (it is perfectly acceptable for an academic military historian to write in such a way that the reader actually looks forward to cracking open the book rather than feeling as though one must punch the clock, roll up their sleeves and count the minutes till it is over...just a friendly reminder to any military historians who might be reading), I found that this was more true of his descriptions of land combat. His narrations of the naval battles were actually quite good.
The Japanese Army and Navy, united in purpose under their Emperor, fought the war far better than did the Russians. Simple as that.
While the Russians, especially the soldiers in Manchuria and northern Korea, fought well, they did not fight as well as did the Japanese. True, as Connaughton points out, the Japanese Army never could win a decisive victory against the Russian Army (in fact, in some of their victories, their own losses were greater than were those of the vanquished), still they displayed something that is lesson number 2 for this war: the value of moral (battlefield) superiority over the enemy.
In other words, the values that can best be described as spiritual-elan, morale, esprit de corps, aggression, the killer instinct (the emphasis on fighting a battle to actually win it, and then crush the enemy in the process, no great army is bereft of it)- all of these things, which cannot be measured scientifically, gave the Japanese the edge in this war.
Modern Western (especially American) war doctrine is almost exclusively scientific. Logistics, materiel, firepower, maneuver, intelligence, etc... While all of these things are important, vital even, they leave something out. When your focus is on the scientific you fail to understand how Washington's Continentals stayed the fight when faced with almost consistent whippings, or how Lee's Rebels performed the feats they did in the face of overwhelming materiel inferiority and a broken logistical system, or how the Wehrmacht fought the entire industrialized world in WWII (and the Imperial German Army did the same in WWI) and punched way above their weight class the entire time. All of these things cannot be, in total, explained unless one realizes that their is, indeed, a spiritual element to warfare. Something the Japanese took for granted. Something Connaughton points out gave the Japanese the edge in this war, something American warfighters should never forget now.
All in all this was a good little book. While I would have preferred something with a bit more meat, it was still a satisfying learning experience and a decently enjoyable read. This is the war that raised the curtain on the modern world, lighting the fuse on the bomb that was the device by which the entire world was changed in the 20th Century. You simply cannot understand WWI, WWII in Asia, or even modern Asia (or Russia's continuing strategic draw to Asia) without understanding this war.
This book would be a good starting point. Recommended.