Has any other book in history been as “prescriptive” as Mein Kampf?

Question

Hitler's signature work, "Mein Kampf," was written while he was in prison (!), following the failure of his so-called "Beer Hall Putsch" in Munich in 1923.

In the book, he laid out in excruciating detail, a step-by-step blueprint of his future plans, which included:

1. Making himself the absolute dictator (not a President or even king with constitutionally limited power) of the country that imprisoned him.
2. Destroying or pushing to the brink of destruction the enemies of his adopted country, to the point of at least threatening to dominate the whole world.
3. Using his future (!) soldiers and "policemen" to arrest and kill as many members of his least favorite group as they could get their hands on.

Hitler's subsequent rise to power was improbable for the following reasons:

1. he was a prisoner (and a convicted felon) at the time he wrote the book;
2. although "German-speaking," he had been born an Austrian, not a German; and
3. he was poor, badly educated (a high school drop-out who was turned down for post-secondary school training (art schools in Vienna)), and a former "foot soldier" (not commissioned officer) from World War I.

In short, he was less than obvious "leadership" material.

Unfortunately, Hitler did "execute." But no one in power took "Mein Kampf" seriously, with the notable exception of Winston Churchill (who was, however,"out of power" early on).

Has any other leader (or CEO) in history (political, commercial, religious) similarly followed the script of a book he published before his coming to power?

Answer 1

The example that comes to my mind is Frederick W. Smith, who, as a student at Yale in the 1960s, wrote a wild-sounding economics paper about a proposal for an air courier service. This was before he "came to power." It reportedly received a C from a professor who said, "The idea has to work in the real world."

Five years or so, later, while Smith was still in his twenties, he founded Federal Express, a company modeled along the lines of his paper. That's rather improbable, for a twenty-something to become the CEO of a company that would become a major corporation.

It was only slightly more probable than the story of the poor, badly educated former foot soldier, who, in eight years (1925-1933) rose from prisoner to the second most powerful man in the world (after FDR). Few, if anyone has produced such a deadly accurate "business plan" before becoming "CEO." Hopefully, no one will ever again "execute" (in more ways than one) like him.

Incidentally, Smith has said that he learned more from history, than business, books. http://www.usnews.com/news/campaign-2008/articles/2008/07/24/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-fred-smith

Answer 2

A lot of people are right now following George Orwell's 1984 as a manual for what the perfect society should look like and implementing it in various countries all around the world.
Same with Marx's Das Kapital, that's been used like that for a century or more.