Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings is a new book from Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, and it asks a simple, awkward question: do leaders actually make a difference?
We tend to read history as the story of great men and women. Diamond is not so sure. Looking across four very different fields, politics, business, sport and religion, he asks when a leader genuinely changes the course of things and when they do not, using examples from Botswana's founding president Seretse Khama to the legendary basketball coach John Wooden. Along the way he pokes at questions like whether CEOs deserve their bonuses and why replacing a coach so often changes nothing.
A clear, thought-provoking work of popular history for readers of Malcolm Gladwell and Yuval Noah Harari, and of Diamond's own Guns, Germs and Steel.
'A must-read from the grand master of analytic history.' Peter Turchin
