For the Major Arcana, I would recommend The Tarot, A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages by Paul Foster Case. Jessie Burns Parke, the BOTA deck's artist, copied the PCS trumps almost exactly (so much so that Case complained mildly about it in the book.)
For the Minor Arcana (as well as the Majors, of course) you could try to find The Qabalistic Tarot for a reasonable price. (Someone here recently said they found it for $45, which would give me pause.) Robert Wang used the RWS deck as one of his four example decks for each of the card descriptions (the others being the Thoth, a TdM deck and Wang's own Golden Dawn tarot.) In many cases he specifically discussed the meaning of the RWS card. The qabalistic front material alone is worth the price of admission, but there is also a lengthy quote from Waite's autobiography, Shadows of Life and Thought, that describes a little about the genesis of the Rider pack. That autobiography might be worth hunting down as well.
Another possibility for a more condensed (and shallower) discussion of the esoteric symbolism would be Eden Gray's "The Complete Guide to the Tarot," which is an expansion of her earlier works, "The Tarot Revealed" and "Mastering the Tarot," all three of which used the RWS for illustration. I understand that Rachel Pollock's latest book is an attempt to recapture some of the simplicity and economy of Gray's approach.
Also, was the "little Arthur Waite book" you mention the full version of his "Pictorial Key to the Tarot," or just an abbreviated LWB? If the latter, you should definitely get the PKT, even though Waite was sometimes less than forthcoming about the full meaning of the symbolism in the cards (despite his stated intention to tell "the unadorned truth about them").