In this video, I review Jared Diamond’s latest book, Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter? I also reflect on the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001.
Watch the video!
In this WanderLearn Show, I mention the following books:1) Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies2) Collapse3) Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
TIME STAMPS
00:00 Great Man Theory
01:54 Silent Spring
2:45 Botswana Seretse Khama
04:00 Resnick's Pomegranates
4:25 Bin Laden
05:55 Diamond's books
08:00 Justice and Forgiveness
Where were you on September 11, 2001?
Review of Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter
I’ve read most of Jared Diamond’s books, which means I’ve also spent most of my adult life arguing with Jared Diamond in my head. In “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” he leans on geography as the grand unified theory of human history a bit too hard, like a man who found one really good hammer and now sees nothing but nails shaped like continents.
“Collapse” aged about as well as a Norse settlement in Greenland—several of its central claims have since been picked apart by other researchers.
So no, I am not a member of the Jared Diamond Fan Club. I just keep paying to renew my membership anyway, because the man can write, and even when I think he’s wrong, I can never quite catch him being lazy about it.
“Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings” asks a genuinely great question: how much do individual leaders actually change the course of events, versus just riding the wave that was already forming?
Diamond tackles it across history, business, sports, and religion, and—plot twist—never really answers it clearly. Which, to be fair, might be the most honest thing he’s ever written. His method leans heavily on “natural experiments,” comparing similar situations with different leaders to isolate their effect. It’s a clever workaround for the fact that we don’t have a spare universe lying around where Napoleon stayed home, and someone else invaded Russia instead. Clever, but still a workaround, and the book occasionally oversells how clean these comparisons really are.
The Botswana chapter is the strongest one in the book, and worth the price of admission. Diamond makes a compelling case that Seretse Khama really was a singular, hard-to-replace figure in turning one of the world’s poorest countries in 1966 into one of Africa’s great development stories—right time, right place, right man, and you believe it.
The business and sports chapters are more of a mixed bag: sometimes CEOs and coaches clearly move the needle, sometimes the data suggests they’re basically along for the ride, and Diamond is admirably willing to let the evidence land wherever it lands instead of forcing a tidy thesis.
Where he lost me was Rachel Carson and “Silent Spring.” Diamond’s argument implies she was essentially irreplaceable, environmentalism’s version of Shakespeare—nobody else could have written that book or moved that needle. Having just read “Silent Spring” myself, I wasn’t convinced only she could have sparked that movement or written that book.
So: four stars. Not because the book nails its own premise, but because Diamond remains one of the most stimulating writers to disagree with in nonfiction today. Recommended, especially for the Botswana chapter and for anyone who enjoys arguing with a very smart, very confident narrator.
DISCLOSURE: The publisher gave me a free advance copy.
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