Sebastian Marshall - Machina

In MACHINA, Marshall states that he’s against the type of modern writing that’s “trite, repetitive, safe, sanitized, patronizing and talking-down to the audience. Few writers want to explore truly deep and hard things.”

MACHINA looks to make the reader smarter and more effective, with a deep exploration of counterintuitive and highly actionable lessons from history. It is a book full of “deep and hard things” — looking to extract the exact mechanics which cause the world to move forwards and backwards through time. Every chapter in the book is designed to make the reader both smarter and more effective, on a range of topics that are very valuable but often neglected.

In Section I, civil war rages across Sengoku-era Japan. VANTAGES dives deep into the mix of philosophy, samurai ethics, innovation and tradition, gunpowder and cavalry charges and assassination, elite strategy and diplomacy, and a whole host of lessons from one of the most intense and inspiring eras of history.

In Section II, learn TEMPORAL CONTROL — tools and techniques to navigate all of time and space to make things happen. Temporal Control opens at the eve of World War I, flashes back to King Croesus of Lydia becoming “the richest man alive” through the invention of metallic coined money, and how Croesus is overthrown by the first modern empire of Cyrus the Great. From there, the book works forwards in time to modern accounting being invented by Leonardo da Vinci’s roommate (really), what culture is and how Mustafa Kemal created the Turkish Republic out of the ruins of the Ottmoman Empire, and goes through to President Truman grappling with Joseph Stalin at the start of the Cold War — with the fate of civilization in the balance.

Finally, in Section III, explore the conflicts of philosophy and world views that never end. DUBIOUS BATTLE sheds light on the type of tradeoffs that can never be resolved, starting with Martin Luther breaking from Pope Leo X — and how Luther’s philosophy of “by faith alone” counterintuitively led to the faith-based British Empire conquering Africa in staggering cognitive dissonance. Learn to understand and judge rank correctly, explore the origin and downfall of aristocracy, and how truly brilliant people like the samurai Miyamoto Musashi, the statesman Benjamin Franklin, and the philosopher and cavalry commander Xenophon navigated the paths to power.

If you’re looking for safe and boring writing, go elsewhere: MACHINA digs deep into what’s really happened — and continues to happen — through all of history and civilization. You’ll come out of it with new worldviews, able to understand and see the world like never before, and navigate it on your path upwards.