Can one person change the world? What qualities determine effective leadership? How do individual talent and historical circumstances combine to shape great leaders?
From the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning, multimillion-copy bestselling classic Guns, Germs and Steel, a landmark study of leadership across politics, religion, business, and sportsseeking to decode how and why leaders matter.
Jared Diamond's erudite, engaging and thought-provoking book takes us a huge step forward toward understanding how circumstances and individual talents, determination and strategy make leaders that have the potential to change our world (hopefully for the better). -Daron Acemoglu, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics
In his acclaimed and influential books Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond transformed our understanding of what makes civilizations rise and fall. Now, in Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings, he studies leaders throughout time to answer the question: do the actions of individuals truly influence history? Or is humanity subject to larger historical, technological, cultural, geographical forces, far beyond the influence of individuals, no matter how powerful they may seem?
On 13 March 1930, a truck sped into an intersection, headed straight for another car's right front door. The passenger of this chauffeur-driven car happened to be Adolf Hitler. If the truck had hit the door, Hitler would have been crushed and killed. But the chauffeur managed to accelerate, and Hitler survived. Would tens of millions of people have died in the Holocaust and World War Two if the chauffeur had been slower to react? Some believe Hitler was unique in his evil abilities, while others think the war was guaranteed by the harsh conditions imposed on Germany post-war.
Do leaders like Hitler, Margaret Thatcher, Genghis Khan, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Belichick, or Christ reall
