Robert D. Oberst

The "Time Traveler Series" is Rob’s first venture in historical fiction. As a management consultant, he wrote innumerable proposals for S&P 500 organizations to enable them to harness the latest technologies. Over twenty years observing how these digital technologies evolved, curious about how these would continue to evolve over the next twenty years, he wrote first book "2020 WEB VISION", which remarkably predicted how they would enhance our homes, businesses and society, especially during the pandemic, which coincidently struck in 2020. Fortunately, the virtual technologies foreshadowed in the book enabled us to continue to work, learn, shop, eat, and socialize safely, thereby saving thousands of lives. "2020 WEB VISION" appeared in over a dozen countries on five continents, in universities such as Harvard, and at research facilities such as Pew.

In the early two-thousands, concerned about our economy and their investments, Rob developed a model that predicted a serious recession in 2008. After the Great Recession, he looked for an overarching cause and found that similar crashes had occurred for over the last 150 years, back to the Civil War, encompassing the Great Depression. A more extensive model showed that these long-term downturns occurred whenever a large generation such as the greatest generation or the war boom baby generation retires, and withdraws their overwhelming financial force from the nation’s economy. The prescient model, contained in "THE FINANCIAL TIME MACHINE" predicted slow growth for the U.S. and other major world economies for over a decade.

Following his death, Rob discovered his father’s Olympic diary recalling his extraordinary adventure to the "Chariots of fire Olympics" in Paris. Gene was also one of the stars of Notre Dame’s first successful football teams when legendary coach Knute Rockne, the winningest coach in college history, greatly enhanced the university’s standing and reputation. Intrigued by numerous articles in his scrapbook, Rob delved into the era—the “Golden Age of American Sports”, to write "GENE KENUCK OBEST". A second book, "RENAISSANCE OLYMIAN", is enhanced by fifty letters between polymaths Gene and Knute, who acquired Gene’s first six coaching position and made it possible for Gene to marry his wife, Catherine. It follows Gene throughout his college coaching career as he interacts with the legendary coaches and athletes of the 20th Century and his subsequent time as a popular professor and artist.

Progressively honing his craft through business strategies, articles, non-fiction books, and biographies, led Rob to try his hand at writing fiction. Similar to his other books, his latest novels in the “Time Traveler Series” are packed with fascinating history and themes that translate to modern times, such as the parallels between our digital revolution and the fifteenth-century’s printing revolution that through the rapid spread of knowledge, similarly, transformed the world, leading to the Renaissance, the Reconquista of Spain by Isabella, the subsequent discovery of America by Columbus, and the Protestant Reformation with Henry the VIIIth .