Publications
Grouped into the Statecraft and Limbic Literacy series and standalone works, in a Dutch and an English edition where both exist. Hardcover, self-published through House of Viridian. Each book informs a pillar of the practice — the printed titles are settled; the rest is at the printer for proof, Jacob's copy to read and revise before anything ships.
Interim Management for the Public Sector
Statecraft series
The standard work on interim management in the public sector. Navigating rather than planning — from the strategic triangle to the first hundred days, from intervention to consolidation.
Decline and Revival
Statecraft series
Is the Netherlands repeating the decline that followed its Golden Age? From trading supremacy to modern complacency — and the path back to relevance.
The Limbic Economy
Limbic Literacy series
How your brain became a business model. A structural analysis of how the attention economy exploits the human limbic system — and how to defend against it.
All of Us Displaced
iRecord
On identity, displacement, and the search for belonging. How globalisation, migration, and digitalisation uproot us — and how we find connection again.
Personal
A memoir. A life told through the books that shaped it — written for his daughter Priya. From Arendsoog to Kundera, from loss to integration.
Twenty-three titles ordered as proof copies on 21 September 2026, awaiting delivery. Text and cover are locked for the proof itself, but not yet final — Jacob reads these on paper before anything is considered finished.
Personal
A memoir. A life told through the books that shaped it — written for his daughter Priya. From Arendsoog to Kundera, from loss to integration.
Twenty-Four Rules for a Good Life
Personal
Twenty-four rules for a good life — a compact pattern language for living well, drawn from a lifetime of reading, work, and reflection.
A Pattern Language for Postmodern Societies
Honderdachtentachtig patronen voor de staat en het leven daarin
Statecraft series
A pattern language for the state, generalised beyond one country: a hundred and eighty-eight institutional patterns for how governance succeeds and how it fails.
A cook's atlas of the dishes that will not work in a domestic oven
Nourishment
A cookbook for high heat. The food a home oven can never quite reach — what happens above 250°C, and how to cook it. Full colour, a page a dish.
Other people's recipes, taken apart to see why they work, and cooked again in one kitchen
Nourishment
Ninety-one recipe cards from a life of eating around the world, taken apart to see why they work and cooked again in one kitchen.
Thinking in the Right Units
Keystone
A climate book. The debate flattens a five-dimensional problem — from carbon-cycle physics to politics — onto a single believer-versus-denier axis. This book pulls the questions apart and argues for reasoning in the right units.
Statecraft series
What the Netherlands adds up to. A short reckoning in the Statecraft series.
A Civil Servant's Counter-History, 1980–2025
Statecraft
Four decades inside the machine of the Dutch public sector, told against the official version — a civil servant's counter-history of how the state actually worked from 1980 to 2025.
A Civil Servant's Account, 2022–2066
Statecraft
The sequel to The Lane: a civil servant carries the same machine forward, 2022 to 2066.
Statecraft · Volume I — The Apparatus
Gedissocieerde organisaties en hun doorwerking
Statecraft series
How dissociated organisations in the public sector function and reverberate — the first volume of the collected Statecraft corpus in book form.
Statecraft · Volume II — From Within and Beyond
Notities van binnenuit en de gedissocieerde Unie
Statecraft series
Notes from within the apparatus, and the dissociated Union at European level.
Statecraft · Volume III — Grammar and Statecraft
Verweesd ontwerp, methode en de geschiedenis van het besturen
Statecraft series
Orphaned design, method, and the history of governing — the grammar behind the dossiers.
Statecraft · Volume IV — Dossiers
Dezelfde woordenschat op afzonderlijke dossiers
Statecraft series
The same vocabulary applied to separate files from practice.
Van wettelijk kader tot werkende organisatie
Statecraft series
From legal framework to working organisation — a handbook for the boards and directors of Dutch joint regulatory bodies.
The Discriminating Eye
Een kleine monografie over anders kijken
Personal
A small monograph on seeing differently — a pamphlet, a view across the seven pillars, and the practice.