Having read about 30-plus of the secondary works listed in this monograph, you could argue that I'm the last person that needs to read another book about this battle. Frankly, a big attraction was to see what an Israeli scholar would make of the event; Kowner admits that the opportunity to write this book made his day at the time. That said, if you come to the history of the Russo-Japanese War fresh, this work does give you a concise examination of the event, the factors that led to a smashing Japanese success, how the battle sealed the Japanese victory in the war, and was, for a time, regarded as a world-changing event; the first hard datum that the era of Western imperialism might be ebbing. Then World War I happened. Still, like any major battle, and possibly what defines a battle as being such, echoes of the fight still color historic interpretations and popular attitudes. My expectations are that if Kyiv pulls out victory over Moscow in the ongoing war, Tsushima (and the Russo-Japanese War in general) is going to be invoked as another exemplar of Russian failures when going on the imperial offensive. ( )