The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905 Book

This book encompasses more than its title suggests. In fact, the first hundred to two hundred pages are spent establishing the history that brought the war about, and the last chapter is spent speculating on the decades thereafter.

So, what actually is the book, then? I would call it something of a prelude to World War One, something of a commentary on borderline theocratic nationalism, and a study on what happens when two nations with very similar military doctrine go to war.
There are very few examples of cunning or tactical genius to be seen in the Russo-Japanese War. Russia's command structure was incompetent and timid while simultaneously overemphasizing courage and heroics, and the only officers with any sense were called cowards for their lack of reliance on miraculous heroics.
Port Arthur itself, the centerpiece around which the war was fought- was a veritable fortress that could have been held indefinitely by anyone who took advantage of the natural and man-made defenses that surrounded it. However, instead of spending the war's preceding years building Port Arthur into the stronghold it could have been, Russia spent its time shipping alcohol across the trans-siberian railway and stationing there what were basically conscripts while Japan was engaging in gunboat-diplomacy with Korea, intending to use Inchon as a staging ground for their troop landings.
That isn't to say the Japanese were much better. The suicidal Nogi, general of the Japanese Third Army- used brute force, or "human bullets" as they called it, as his go-to strategy. He was known even in Japan as an ineffective officer, as displayed by his previous exploits in the Sino-Japanese war. He himself did not want to take command of the Third Army, and after the war he killed himself out of shame.
However, if there was a strategically minded individual among the Japanese command, it was Admiral Togo, who distinguished himself by launching "the first Pearl Harbor," in which Japanese torpedo boats and destroyers attacked the moored Russian fleet at Port Arthur. Partially by his command and partially by the Russians' badly trained, badly led Navy, the Japanese fleet dominated the seas and crippled Russia's fleets.

All this to say, this book was well researched, gripping to read, and it shined a whole lot of light on a lesser talked about part of World War One's conception. The war was brief, but it was, in its day- the largest armed conflict ever fought by mankind. It was all fought around one tiny port on the southern shores of Manchuria, west of Korea, by men who didn't understand their enemy or themselves.