Zachary S. Mays
U.S. Marine Corps veteran. Researcher. Author of two forthcoming books on institutional formation, leadership, and the recurring patterns of history.
Zachary S. Mays is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran with deployments to Djibouti, Iraq, and the Horn of Africa. His background is in large-scale logistics, organizational planning, and information systems — fields that gave him a direct and sustained view of what happens when institutions fail to tell people what they need to hear.
The first book started as a practical guide. Twenty-four of history's worst rulers made for excellent and frequently hilarious case studies in evaluating what leaders actually mean rather than what they say. The second came from a frustrating argument — a striking absence of historical grounding and independent critical thinking that made one thing clear: someone needed to write the manual.
The questions How We Got Here raised about high-control organizations and America's odd comfort with them required more than argument. They required evidence. That became the Cultiness Spectrum.
The Cultiness Spectrum Dataset applies Daniella Mestyanek Young and Amy Reed's framework from The Culting of America across 370 American organizations — systematically, evenhandedly, and publicly. It is a free educational resource and will remain one.
Forthcoming
How We Got Here
The Formation of a Population Built Not to Know
A synthesis argument tracing how American theological, educational, and institutional formation systems produced a population psychologically primed for high-control group dynamics — and why that was not an accident.
Forthcoming
Assholes in History
A Comprehensive Survey of Catastrophic Leadership, Spectacular Ego, and the Recurring Human Failure to Say Temper, Temper
Twenty-four of history's worst rulers as a practical guide to evaluating what leaders and powerful people actually mean — not what they say. The pattern is easier to see at historical distance. The examples are genuinely funny.
For press, speaking, and research inquiries: zachary.mays@icloud.com