Here is the deal. I read the books, do the messy handwritten work, and then publish the parts worth publishing. You get the compendium without doing eleven months of reading, and I get an audience that will notice if I quietly stop at book four. We are using each other. It is a healthy relationship.
What I will actually publish
A monthly synthesis essay. The best connection I found that month, written up properly, 500 to 1,000 words. This is the good stuff, the whole reason the project exists.
Phase recaps. Four of them, one at the end of each phase, on what the last set of books changed in how I see the whole thing.
The dialectic notes. The five or six fights where two brilliant people flatly disagree and I have to pick a side in public and risk being wrong. Orwell against Huxley. Fukuyama against Scott. Ostrom against everyone who says concentration is destiny.
The tracker, in the open. Every concept, every book, and a status column I have now promised in writing to keep honest. If it says I am on book two in November, you have my permission to send a concerned email.
The framework redesign, when it breaks. Somewhere around book eight to twelve the neat seven-domain grid falls apart. I will show you the crack and the rebuild in real time, because that redesign is the single most useful thing that will happen in the entire project.
Subscribe to get these when they land, they go out through Raisonner, my newsletter. No cadence theatre, no "5 lessons power taught me this week." Monthly, when there is something real to say.
Read the books with me
The most fun way to follow is to actually read along. Same book, same order, roughly the same weeks. Bring your own opinions, especially the ones that disagree with mine. Start with Thucydides and the Melian Dialogue, a pencil, and a cheap notebook you are not precious about. That is the entire barrier to entry.
The reading plan has all 27 books and the order. The method has how to read and write them without it turning into a second job.
Or steal the system and point it somewhere else
This never had to be about power. The framework, the reading plan, the tracker, all of it came out of one conversation and a repeatable set of prompts. Point it at anything you want to actually understand: negotiation, cities, the history of your own industry, why your org keeps reorganising and never improving.
Here is the exact chain, adapt it in an afternoon.
-
Define the territory. Not "recommend me books on X." Instead: name the intersections you care about, say you want reality-based and multidimensional work, and ask for the historical and philosophical lineage of the ideas and how they connect. The framing in this first prompt does about eighty percent of the work.
-
Ask for the map and the sequence together. "Update the interconnection map to include the reading sequence, so I can see which concepts and threads I would be learning as I read." This turns a flat list into a curriculum that builds.
-
Ask how to read and write it. "If I were building a commonplace notebook from these concepts, how would I actually read and take notes?" This is where you get a method instead of a pile.
-
Ask for a trackable index. "Give me an index of every concept in the order I will meet them, so I can track progress." This becomes your dashboard.
-
Ask for the plan. "Summarise all of this into steps I can follow over the next few months." Now you have something you can print and stick on the wall.
-
Optional, extract the chain itself, so you can run it on the next subject without rebuilding it.
Push hardest on prompt two. If the output feels like a reading list instead of a curriculum that stacks, say so, and ask for the connections again. That is where the whole thing either clicks or stays shallow.
Start today
Pick the book. Buy the pencil. Do