The Tide at Sunrise seems to be a common recommendation among websites, including Norm's own. Here's a short review from a Pacific University website:
Despite being an oft over looked struggle, there are quite a few books about the Russo-Japanese War available today. However, most of these books tend to narrow their focus on certain aspects of the war. For example, Ian Nish, in The Origins of the Russo-Japanese War , investigates the details leading up the war but not the actual conflict itself. While focused studies of this kind are important, they are of less value to one who is not totally familiar with the subject. If one is looking for a comprehensive, authoritative overview of the entire Russo-Japanese War, its causes, battles, and outcome, then Denis and Peggy Warner's The Tide at Sunrise stands out as the best resource.
Published over thirty years ago, The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo Japanese War 1904-1905 remains one of the most authoritative overviews of the Russo-Japanese war available today. One aspect of the war was that it was closely watched around the world. This resulted in the publication of a dearth of contemporary documentation on multiple aspects of the war. The Warners produced their expansive study overwhelmingly from these primary sources. The vast majority of their strategic information comes from official Japanese government documents, such as The Official History of the Russo-Japanese War , and the Japanese Official Naval History of the Russo-Japanese War . However their sources are in no way limited to the Japanese and include the writings of key Russian figures, such as General Kuropatkin and Count Witte. The bibliography, alone, speaks to the vast scope of this work.
The age of The Tide at Sunrise is, however, a factor. First published before the fall of communism in Russia, the Warners' study does suffer, somewhat, from a lack of more modern Russian analysis of the war. Furthermore, the fact that Russian official documents are more readily available to the public than they were thirty years ago leaves room for the possibility of new information not available to the Warners at the time. None the less, the fact that the Warners' book has been republished as recently as 2001, and the lack of similarly thorough and authoritative studies today, stands as a testament to its continued value.
The Russo-Japanese War is probably one of the least studied conflicts of the twentieth century. Overshadowed by the more global World Wars and the Cold War, there is probably less published work on the war available today than there was at the beginning of the last century. Still, a significant amount of information on the war is in existence, and the The Tide at Sunrise remains one of the most complete compilations of that information. If one were to attempting to understand the Russo-Japanese War from just one book, the The Tide at Sunrise would be that book.
Warner, Denis A. and Peggy Warner. The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo Japanese War 1904-1905 . 2 nd Ed. New York: Taylor and Francis Ltd, 2001.
And FYI, I just picked up at a used bookstore Paul Halpern's Naval History of World War I. It is an excellent read; I just finished the chapter about Germany's attempt at Cruiser Warfare, and many of the exploits sound just like the raiding we all do in DG.
