Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter?

by Jared Diamond

A National Bestseller

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 sports—seeking 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 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 really change our world? If yes, what qualities and circumstances are required of a leader to make their mark?

Drawing on his deep study of the life and career of a diverse cast of leaders famous and obscure– from Botswana president Seretse Khama, to environmentalist Rachel Carson, to legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden–Diamond reveals how leadership effectiveness is determined by a range of complex interrelated factors. Understanding these successes and failures and the opportunities leaders did (or did not) seize illuminates the influence of today's leaders and helps us to reflect on the value of our votes, our faith, our passions, and the people who happen to steer our ship.

With the same remarkable scope of Diamond's classic bestsellers, Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings takes readers on a rich journey through the lives of humanity’s most well-known characters to reveal how time, place, and person can come together to change the course of history.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Leadership, Politics, Sociology, Philosophy, Business

288 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2026

About the author

Jared Mason Diamond is an American scientist, historian, and author best known for his popular science and history books and articles. Originally trained in biochemistry and physiology, Diamond is commonly referred to as a polymath, stemming from his knowledge in many fields including anthropology, ecology, geography, and evolutionary biology. He is a professor of geography at UCLA.

In 2005, Diamond was ranked ninth on a poll by Prospect and Foreign Policy of the world's top 100 public intellectuals.

Reviews

[Liong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another interesting book from Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel.

We often believe that successful countries, companies, religions or sports teams are built by great leaders. But is that really true? Would history have been different without them, or would someone else have achieved the same results?

Jared Diamond explores this interesting question through history, politics, business, religion and sports. 🤩

We often give leaders too much credit for success and too much blame for failure.

Timing and circumstances matter. Even a brilliant leader needs the right opportunity.

Nobody succeeds alone. Resources, culture, institutions and the people around them all play important roles.

Replacing a CEO, president or coach does not automatically improve performance.

A leader can only make a significant difference when they have the power and freedom to make important decisions.

Some individuals really do change history, but not every successful leader is irreplaceable.

We should judge leadership by evidence and actual results, not just reputation or charisma. 💪

As someone interested in business, investing and history, this book reminds me not to judge a company's success by its CEO alone.

A great company does not necessarily have a great CEO, and a struggling company does not necessarily have a bad one. Sometimes we confuse good leadership with good timing or favourable circumstances.

Not every part is easy reading, especially the statistical discussions, but I enjoyed how the author connects so many different fields to answer one simple question.

Perhaps the most important lesson is not whether leaders matter, but WHEN they matter and how much difference they actually make.

Before praising or blaming someone, we should look at the bigger picture. Great leaders can make a difference, but nobody succeeds entirely on their own.

A thought-provoking read that reminds me to question what I have always believed about successful people, leadership and even investing. 💲💰

[Eric Nehrlich · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a terrible book! I remember Diamond's book, Guns, Germs and Steel fondly, as it gave me a new way of looking at historical trends, so I pounced on this book as I am always looking for leadership insights.

Instead, his answer to the question "Do leaders matter?" is that it depends on the leader's ability (charisma and organization), timing, and context (especially how much power they have to make unilateral changes - dictators and tech CEOs and college coaches have more power than other leaders).

That's it. It's 300 pages of that with a few mini biographies of various leaders. His "big" insight is the use of natural experiments (statistical analyses) to understand the impact of leadership, but that's old news for anybody that read Freakonomics 20 years ago.

At least it was easy to read, so I kept reading, thinking that at some point there had to be something insightful or interesting. But there wasn't. Don't bother. Go read about Seretse Khama, the founding leader of Botswana - that was the only story in the book that was new to me, and it's pretty compelling.

[Mike Commito · Rating 2 out of 5]

If I had known that, after 238 pages, Jared Diamond’s answer to the question of do leaders matter would be, “depending on the context, the timing, and the leader’s ability,” I never would have picked this up. Diamond employs a natural experiment lens rather than biography to try to answer his hypothesis but it just misses the mark. You’re better off reading a biographies of Botswana’s Sererse Khama or basketball coach John Wooden, two figures that Diamond covers in passing, than spending time with this book that certainly did not live up to its cover.

[Demetri Papadimitropoulos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who Owns an Outcome? – Jared Diamond on Leadership, Luck, and the Limits of Individual Credit
“Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings” is most persuasive when it asks not whether leaders matter, but which parts of history would look different if someone else had occupied the opening.
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | August 20th, 2026

Dying in a traffic accident is not usually part of a theory of leadership, but Jared Diamond begins “Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter?” with Adolf Hitler nearly doing exactly that. In March 1930, a truck struck Hitler’s car and stopped just short of crushing him. Kill Hitler there and Versailles remains, along with German anti-Semitism, economic ruin and political rage. What becomes harder to picture is the catastrophe that followed in precisely the form we know. Diamond’s question is therefore less tidy than “Do leaders matter?” Which parts of an outcome belong to the person who acted, which were already being prepared by circumstance, and how much confidence should we have when assigning the shares?

Even the old contest between heroic individuals and impersonal forces is too coarse for that inquiry. Diamond has little use for the romance of the singular world-bender, but he is equally dissatisfied with explanations that turn presidents, founders, coaches and prophets into decorative passengers. He keeps prying apart things ordinary stories of greatness like to fuse: creation, acceleration, scale, form. Did the person make the possibility exist? Move it faster? Enlarge it? Choose which version prevailed? Politics, business, sports and religion give him four places to try the question. Success wants an owner. Catastrophe wants a culprit. History, inconveniently, prefers a committee.

Most of the book’s formal engine comes from making biography answer to comparison. A life can show us what Seretse Khama or Rachel Carson did; unexpected deaths, illnesses, assassinations and firings can show what happens when leadership changes without the surrounding world changing quite so deliberately. Biography gives Diamond motive, sequence and texture, but no proper control group. Diamond likes the odd empirical opening: a Danish dataset lets researchers ask what happens to profits when a CEO dies, is hospitalized or suffers a family loss; assassination studies compare successful attempts with failed ones rather than pretending murder can be randomized. Comparative evidence can establish that CEOs, rulers or coaches matter on average while remaining stubbornly unable to tell us how indispensable Hitler, Bezos or Jesus was. That mismatch never disappears. The book is better for admitting it, though not always cautious enough about what follows from it.

Existing work has occupied nearby ground, most notably Gautam Mukunda’s “Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter”; Archie Brown’s “The Myth of the Strong Leader” has likewise warned against confusing dominance with effectiveness. Diamond’s contribution is not the revelation that people meet circumstances. It is the effort to name the terms of the meeting. Timing matters. So does replaceability. Eventually, discretion becomes the word doing the most work. His “Hamlet test” asks whether another plausible contemporary could have produced something comparable if the famous figure vanished. Shakespeare makes the device irresistible because the rival field is unusually visible. History is usually less courteous. It rarely provides a closed roster of substitutes whose unrealized futures can be inspected.

The useful turn comes when Diamond stops treating uniqueness as the prize. A better question is how much room an office, institution or moment leaves for personal difference to become consequential. Founding presidents act before precedent and veto points have fully accumulated. Autocrats, generally for worse, encounter fewer institutional brakes. A technology chief can redirect products and strategy faster than the head of a regulated utility tied to decades of infrastructure and contract. Discretion says nothing about wisdom or virtue. It simply enlarges the consequences of choosing differently, which is often a better measure of practical power than the familiar theater of personality.

Rachel Carson flips the problem because she possessed almost none of the formal authority usually associated with leadership. She commanded no government and ran no large organization, yet “Silent Spring” helped accelerate environmental concern and connect ecological damage more forcefully to human health. Diamond does not need the melodramatic counterfactual in which environmentalism vanishes without her. The subtler possibility is enough: the movement still arrives, but later, or with a different emphasis, or through another public voice. Carson is replaceable at the level of category and harder to replace at the level of configuration. Her absence does not erase the future. It changes its handwriting.

If Carson demonstrates influence without office, Seretse Khama shows what unusually broad discretion can do before institutions have closed off their options. Botswana reached independence desperately poor and lightly developed; then immense diamond deposits were discovered on the lands of Khama’s own Bangwato tribe. As both founding president and hereditary chief, Khama helped place mineral rights under national control rather than letting them harden into tribal property and an invitation to secession, corruption or elite capture. He did not create the diamonds, Botswana’s small population or the extraordinary luck of their being found after independence rather than before it. His achievement was to decide what that luck would become: national investment rather than merely local advantage.

Pomegranates furnish the business section with its strangest analogue. Lynda and Stewart Resnick possessed an improbable combination of acreage, capital, marketing skill, patience and private control when they helped create a mass market for pomegranate juice. Diamond argues that few plausible substitutes had the same bundle. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk present the inverse problem because competitors were already moving toward their respective industries. Remove them and the future does not disappear. Its dominant design may. Bezos did not make e-commerce possible; he helped make an Amazon-shaped version of it standard. By this point the book has quietly exchanged one question for another: not “Would this exist?” but “Whose preferences became infrastructure?”

A sports team gives Diamond something political history rarely does: enough repeated, measurable outcomes to catch us confusing a plot with a cause. John Wooden supplies the celebrated individual case, but regression to the mean does more intellectual damage. A team suffers an abysmal stretch, fires its coach and then improves. The replacement looks transformative until similarly miserable teams that retain their coaches improve too. Injuries, bad luck and statistical variance can revert toward ordinary levels without anyone becoming wiser overnight. The mind still wants to hand the recovery to somebody. Sometimes changing the coach is wisdom. Sometimes it is merely changing the person rolling the dice after three low numbers.

Perhaps Diamond is most himself when an abstraction suddenly acquires weight and weather. Genghis Khan needs rain: rain produces grass, grass feeds animals, animals supply horses, and horses enlarge military capacity. Botswana gets diamonds. A CEO goes to the hospital. A coach rolls badly. Hitler’s car escapes the truck. Diamond is not a lyrical stylist, and trying to make him one would misdescribe the pleasure of the prose. He likes an example that can carry the argument on its back. His sentences are plainspoken, cumulative and conversational, interrupted by rhetorical questions and dryly mischievous hypotheticals. He writes like a lecturer who would rather show you the control group and the loose screw in the apparatus than let a fluent anecdote impersonate proof. His own life keeps wandering into the lecture, too: family history shadows the Hitler question, UCLA supplies Wooden and a certain affectionate exasperation, New Guinea returns as both field experience and, in the epilogue, a challenge to the assumption that strong leaders are simply a human constant. The first person is connective tissue rather than subject, but it keeps the book from sounding assembled out of studies.

And show his work he does. Diamond has a touching faith in explanation and a somewhat less touching distrust of implication. Timing, replaceability and discretion return so reliably that an attentive reader eventually begins anticipating them before he does. The repetition is useful up to a point: the book crosses enough disciplines that its variables could otherwise scatter. It should also make the argument unusually easy to follow in audio. But clarity has diminishing returns. By the later chapters one occasionally reaches the conclusion early and has time to inspect the furniture.

Different arenas reset the experiment, though not equally. Politics establishes founder effects, institutional constraint and individual latitude. Business asks how industry and governance alter executive power. Sports gives Diamond repeated outcomes and a bracing encounter with randomness. Religion is the stress test because founders die while movements continue to acquire organizers, communal rules, persecutors, patrons, armies, converts and states. Every additional intermediary makes “the leader did it” harder to sustain. The same vocabulary still applies, but the evidence beneath it has changed character. That is not a defect the structure can solve; it is the experiment the structure finally performs on Diamond’s own method. How far can the same causal grammar travel before resemblance begins doing work that evidence cannot?

In sports, wins and losses recur by the thousands; corporate profits and executive disruptions can at least be compared numerically. Political judgment is less obedient. Growth may rise while liberty declines; institutions may survive while territory is lost; victory itself may arrive at a cost no single metric settles. Religion lengthens the chain further. Christianity’s eventual scale passes through Paul, Constantine, communal practice, demography, state power, empire, missionary activity and conquest. The longer the movement survives, the less its global form can be assigned cleanly to its founder. Two millennia of religious expansion cannot support the same causal inference as a coaching change merely because both can be described with words such as timing and leadership.

More difficult is the elasticity of Diamond’s own explanation. A large leader effect can be attributed to opportunity, timing or freedom of action; a small one can be attributed to constraint, consensus or interchangeable alternatives. A framework that can accommodate both may still be right, but it needs evidence strong enough to prevent hindsight from doing the real work. Diamond sees the danger. He discusses uncontrolled variables, reverse causation, measurement difficulties and the imperfections of natural experiments. Yet the methodological caution is sometimes stricter than the synthesis built from it. There is a neat irony here: a book warning against over-crediting conspicuous individuals occasionally gives its own explanatory vocabulary rather generous credit.

In the end, the middle case proves the most interesting. The choice is not between one indispensable genius and a world of placeholders. Several people may be capable of producing the same broad development while producing recognizably different versions of it. E-commerce without Bezos is easy to imagine; Amazon’s particular dominance is not guaranteed. Environmental concern without Carson is plausible; its speed and emphasis may shift. Botswana has diamonds regardless of Khama, but what becomes of their revenue still depends on decisions someone has to make. Replaceability is not irrelevance. A leader can be unnecessary to the category and decisive to the configuration.

The institutions around us keep staging Diamond’s experiment whenever they enlarge one person’s freedom to act. Executive authority, founder voting control, immense CEO compensation and succession anxiety all conceal the same practical issue beneath the personality theater: what can this individual decide that another officeholder could not, and who retains the power to refuse? That question is more revealing than whether someone merely appears strong. Carson supplies the inverse case. Sometimes a person changes the menu of choices without possessing the formal authority to select from it.

Rated 82/100, or 4/5 stars, “Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings” is most convincing when it makes causal credit harder to award and least convincing when synthesis begins to look cleaner than proof. Its best chapters divide achievement among the person who acts, the opening that made action possible, the institutions that permitted it and the accidents no one earned. At its weakest, the accounting becomes finer than the evidence can support. The overreach matters, but it grows from the same ambition that keeps the book from collapsing into another inventory of leadership traits.

Once Diamond has removed the crown from leadership, he wisely does not replace it with a machine. People can alter outcomes without becoming their sole authors; circumstances can constrain without becoming fate. We inherit openings we did not create, institutions we did not design, rivals we did not choose and weather we cannot command. Some squander that inheritance. Some use it well. A few give an already possible future a form that later looks inevitable. History may rarely belong to one person, but neither are people interchangeable. Somewhere between those propositions, a truck misses, rain falls, diamonds surface – and somebody still has to decide what happens next.

[Julio The Fox · Rating 2.25 out of 5]

I love Jared Diamond and am proud to have had him as a colleague at UCLA. His previous books, GERMS, GUNS, AND STEEL, THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE, and CATASTROPHE, are models of scrupulous research, personal reflection, and humanist thinking; in other words, everything PROFITS, PROPHETS, COACHES, AND KINGS is not. Diamond uses metrics (ugh!) to evaluate how much influence and historical importance recent figures such as Margaret Thatcher, Deng Xiao Peng, Adolf Hitler, John Wooden, and Seretse Khama, the first president of Botswana and Diamond's personal hero, had in shaping their peoples for good and evil. No numbers can do justice to such a meaty topic, and the writing is dull, like all statistical analysis. Great subject, failed endeavor.

[Leanne Hale]

So disappointed in this one. I was utterly bored.

[savana]

i see bill belichick. i click want to read.

[Christian · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

A fascinating question, but an incomplete view of leadership

I loved Guns, Germs, and Steel. It was a genuine eye-opener and is still a five-star book for me, so I came to this one with high expectations.

Diamond takes on a fascinating question: when do individual leaders actually make a difference? I had never thought of leadership as something you could study scientifically, and I appreciated being introduced to the research. His breadth is a strength too. He covers business leaders, military commanders and sports coaches as well as politicians.

My main reservation is his definition. Diamond essentially measures leadership by whether someone changes the course of events beyond what would otherwise have happened. That says something about historical impact, but little about leadership in practice.

Uniqueness alone cannot be the measure. By that logic, Hitler is an exceptional leader, because his monstrous impact was far from the normal course of events. That cannot make him a greater leader than someone who achieves something constructive by a less extraordinary path. A driver who takes a car at full speed over a cliff has produced a more unusual outcome than the one who wins the race, but that doesn't make him the better driver. Direction and outcome have to be part of the definition.

Leadership also means executing well, getting the best out of people, avoiding disasters and getting results faster than would otherwise happen. Diamond touches on speed, which I found valuable, but these practical sides deserved far more attention.

The book is also poorly structured. The argument often feels back to front, with examples arriving before any clear framework for them. Diamond admits this isn't a proper scientific study, which is honest, but I still wanted a more coherent argument.

An intellectually stimulating introduction to an important subject. Worth reading for the question; don't expect the answer.

[Dr. Alan Albarran · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings says it all as to what this book's subject matter is used to identify a simple question: Can one person change the world? Related to that, what qualities determine effective leadership?

An established author, Jared Diamond is perhaps best known for his book Guns, Germs, and Steel Trying to tackle leadership as organized by the author is challenging. I'm not an expert by any means, but as a retired academic professor I did teach a leadership course for several semesters towards the end of my career. My knowledge of leadership grew over time to recognize it is a multi-faceted and difficult topic to fully grasp, or develop some sort of "formula" to use to explain why one leader in different fields are more successful than others. Is it genetics? Is it circumstances? There are no quick and easy answers.

The writing is very good. The author uses examples from business, religion, sports, and politics to present something of a framework to explain leadership. But to me the author falls short of the premise. The topic is just too vast with too many unknown variables to try to come up with a new model to define leadership.

A few criticisms. There is a great deal of redundancy across chapters trying to explain things. Further, one could certainly quibble with the individuals Diamond picks to build his cases around. For every "leader" he discusses it would be possible to exchange that leader with another and perhaps reach a different outcome.

As such, you probably won't find your knowledge of leadership has changed much after reading this book.

I want to thank the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to review an ARC of this text.

[Trintje · Rating 3 out of 5]

Take a shot every time Diamond writes the researcher couldn’t do a natural experiment because it would immoral and/or unethical

High quality of writing and the stories of the leaders themselves were interesting…. that said it really didn’t answer the research question at all (beyond basic logic)

[Jami Adarsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personality + Situation + Behaviour = Impact

[Naziza Akhter · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book definitely had lots to learn from, and I particularly enjoyed the mini biographies scattered throughout the book.

However, the author definitely repeated himself constantly and created a wall of redundant text that took away from the reader’s ability to gauge a poignant conclusion. And ultimately once the author did finally arrive at the point after circling it for ages, it seemed rather anticlimactic and obvious. For example saying something obvious like: leaders need to have the luck of timing on their side to be successful, after meandering for 30+ pages.

As a result, by the end, I was speed reading the book just to finish it, having lost all my patience with it.

[Chad Manske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jared Diamond’s “Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter?” is a brisk, provocative challenge to the comforting belief that history is chiefly made by heroic individuals. Rather than simply ranking “great men” and great women, Diamond asks a more demanding counterfactual question: if a particular leader had been absent, would someone else, operating in the same conditions, likely have produced a similar result? He calls this the “Hamlet test,” and it gives the book both its intellectual engine and its mischievous edge. Diamond’s answer is neither the sweeping determinism associated with his earlier work nor a celebration of personality. Leaders matter, he contends, but unevenly—and especially where institutional constraints are weak, authority is concentrated, timing is favorable, and an individual possesses rare organizational or persuasive gifts. That framework lets him move with characteristic range through politics, business, religion, and sport. The result is less a unified theory of leadership than a sequence of lively analytical experiments: cases in which the person, the moment, and the surrounding system can be pulled apart, at least provisionally, to see what each contributed. The book’s chief virtue is its insistence on intellectual humility. Biography naturally exaggerates agency because stories require protagonists; hindsight turns contingent decisions into destiny. Diamond pushes readers to notice the enabling terrain beneath every celebrated leader—the institutions, followers, rivals, inherited resources, and accidents that make exceptional action possible. For readers accustomed to military history or executive mythology, this corrective is particularly useful: command matters, but command never operates in a vacuum. Yet the method also creates the book’s limitations. Counterfactuals are indispensable but inherently contestable, and Diamond’s broad comparisons can feel more suggestive than conclusive. The numerical estimates and cross-domain analogies, especially between CEOs and coaches, occasionally risk flattening important differences in mission, legitimacy, and human consequence. Several reviewers have found the treatment engaging but mixed or flawed, even while acknowledging its breadth and originality. Still, “Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings” succeeds as a serious invitation to argue. It replaces the lazy question—“Was this person great?”—with better ones: What alternatives existed? What powers did the leader actually control? Was the achievement reproducible? Diamond does not settle the ancient dispute between individual agency and circumstance. He makes it newly interesting, and more difficult to evade.

[Ernest Spoon · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

First of all I will address one small, nearly insignificant omission by Diamond concerning Jeff Bezos: Amazon would never have gotten off the ground without the United States Postal Service's three-day guaranteed delivery Priority Mail. I know this for a fact because I delivered many, many priority mail parcels for Amazon, when it was primarily a bookseller, in the 1990s.

Now onto Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter. Quite frankly I did not like it as much as Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

It might be too facile to say that for me it seems as if timing is everything. Genghis Khan would not have founded a continent spanning empire without favorable climatic conditions. A favorable climate is also said to have contributed to the rise of the Roman Empire. Nor do I think is it any coincidence that computer and internet technology boom happened in the years following the Reagan Administration's break up of the Bell System and the subsequent looting of Bell Labs, inventor of the transistor and foundational computer hardware and software, under Carly Fiorina.

The exception might be Diamond's favorite basketball coach, UCLA's John Wooden, to "the timing is everything" hypothesis. However, once a college coach in any of the major NCAA sports wins a couple of national championships in quick succession, the top players in the land recruit themselves.

While being a humble, unassuming fellow Wooden also possessed charisma. And it is observable the charisma is a necessary trait for a successful leader. But Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump are said to be slopping over with charisma and I think both are blithering idiots.

So what is charisma? I tend to side with Julian Jaynes: “The mind is still haunted with its old unconscious ways; it broods on lost authorities; and the yearning, the deep and hollowing yearning for divine volition and service is with us still.”<

I don't mean to sound so harsh because I really enjoyed reading this book.

[Katherine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lacking vs. my experience with 5 other Jared Diamond books.
One star was lost for editing problems (e.g., pg 127 states Jobs is stepfather to Bezos?!?) and the remainder for dumbed-down content (including lots of repetitive summaries that left me doing some skimming) and my puzzlement in a few areas:
Repeated use of personal & family anecdotes - perhaps meant to add flavor, IMO they were used as supportive justifications.
Glaring omission of deregulation's impact on business environment in the 1990s and recent decades (pg 150).
While using clear & engaging examples about females (Carson, Resnick) otherwise silent on female leadership beyond some name dropping. And perhaps female basketball coaching data can be included (or was it?)
Red Sox anecdote - Varitek punching Rodriguez in the face is an example of Varitek's leadership!?!
This reads like a fun solo project about an interesting topic by a solid writer, but far from transformational content I've grown to expect from Diamond. I'd have preferred greater involvement from an editor, and partnership with an economist.

[Dallin Kohler · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

Incredibly underwhelming, coming from a huge fan of GG&S.

Diamond states from the beginning that the question of leaders mattering is more of an "when" than an "if", but even after 250 pages I don't think he effectively communicated that "when" at all. Unlike GG&S, where the title itself already stakes the claim, I couldn't even really decipher what the claim was, if there was a claim at all.

Other thoughts: The religion tangent was the weakest of the four. I think the sports coaching would have the most available and objective data and from a statistics perspective is thus probably the best avenue to approach it, but even that section was underwhelming. History tangent was maybe the most interesting but still underwhelming.

Bland. I wanted to give higher initially out of deference to Diamond but if this had been any other name on the cover I would never have considered 3 stars. Maybe Diamond set too high of a bar for himself. 2.5 stars, final answer.

[Chris M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Objectively, it's a pretty good book, but it is repetitive. That said, it does have some interesting sections such as the history of Botswana and it's unique position in Africa. There is also an interesting section about the Resnicks and their unique position where they were able to scale the sale of pomegranate juice at a high level.

If I could summarize this book in one sentence, it would be that leaders play an important role, but you also need to consider timing, environmental circumstances as well as social context too.

[Jon Barr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a leadership book, as the author made clear in the introduction. This is a study of leadership across different spheres throughout history. It was interesting, but I would have enjoyed some actionable conclusions.

[Gary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Will return to review once I've cooled down.

[Sarah Jensen · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

Systems vs. Individuals, Traffic Near-Misses, and the “Hamlet Test”: A Review of Jared Diamond’s Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings
Posted on Prairiefoxreads.com https://prairiefoxreads.blogspot.com/...

Book Details:

Title: Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter?
Author: Jared Diamond
Publisher: Mariner Books (Published September 1, 2026)
Format: Hardcover, 288 pages
Genres: Nonfiction, History, Politics, Leadership, Sociology, Business
Before jumping into a morning of regulatory meetings and organizational workflows, I always try to carve out a quiet hour just for myself. While my husband and the kids were still fast asleep upstairs, I poured a fresh mug of dark roast coffee, settled into my reading chair beneath the trailing vines of my pothos and philodendrons, and let my cat curl up across my lap. Occasionally, I like to trade my usual supernatural thrillers and historical fiction for a meaty work of macro-history—especially when it comes from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse.

In Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter?, Jared Diamond tackles one of the oldest debates in sociology and historiography across a brisk 288 pages: Do individual leaders genuinely steer the course of history, or are we all merely passengers carried along by massive geographical, technological, cultural, and economic currents?

Near-Misses and Root Cause Analysis
For decades, Diamond has been famous for arguing that macro-environmental factors—like crop diversity and continental geography—shape the fate of civilizations. Here, he pivots to examine the human variable across four distinct arenas: business (“Profits”), religion (“Prophets”), sports (“Coaches”), and politics (“Kings”).

To frame the debate, Diamond opens with a chilling historical counterfactual: On March 13, 1930, a heavy truck barreled into an intersection straight toward the passenger door of a car carrying Adolf Hitler. Only a split-second acceleration by Hitler’s chauffeur prevented a fatal collision. Diamond asks the haunting question: If that chauffeur’s reflexes had been a fraction of a second slower, would World War II and the Holocaust still have happened due to post-war German conditions, or was Hitler’s specific, malignant agency required?

In my day job, I spend a massive amount of time conducting root cause analyses, evaluating near-misses, and looking at how systemic safeguards interact with human decision-making. In safety and compliance, we are trained never to stop at “individual error” or “individual genius”—because systems usually dictate outcomes. Yet, as anyone who has ever worked under a visionary director or a toxic micromanager knows, the person sitting in the executive chair can either fortify a system or burn it to the ground. Watching Diamond apply his analytical lens to the tension between systemic determinism and individual agency felt right up my professional alley.

The “Hamlet Test” and Microclimates of Success
To evaluate whether a specific leader truly mattered, Diamond essentially applies what can be called the “Hamlet test”—asking whether the historical play could have proceeded the same way without the Prince of Denmark in the cast.

Across the book’s case studies, we meet a fascinatingly eclectic roster of figures: from Genghis Khan, Margaret Thatcher, and Mark Zuckerberg to environmental pioneer Rachel Carson, NFL coach Bill Belichick, and legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. One of the most compelling profiles is that of Seretse Khama, the first president of Botswana, whose unique blend of traditional tribal authority, international perspective, and political skill steered his resource-rich nation toward stable democracy rather than the corruption that plagued neighboring states.

As a houseplant obsessive, Diamond’s thesis reminded me of how we cultivate rare flora. You can have a plant with extraordinary genetic potential (the individual leader), bit if you place it in freezing darkness with compacted, nutrient-dead soil (the historical and cultural environment), it will never thrive. Conversely, the best greenhouse conditions in the world won’t turn a common weed into a variegated monstera. Leadership effectiveness isn’t a solo act; it is the exact moment when unique personal preparation meets an open ecological niche.

High-Altitude Scope vs. Granular Depth
If I have one critique of Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings, it is that packing kings, religious founders, tech CEOs, and basketball coaches into 288 pages occasionally makes the analysis feel a bit rushed. While comparing John Wooden’s coaching philosophy or Bill Belichick’s gridiron strategy to world leaders is intellectually fun, the stakes of a championship game obviously don’t carry the weight of national survival or Rachel Carson’s fight to save the biosphere.

Still, as a mother and a citizen trying to make sense of a noisy modern world, I appreciated how accessible and engaging Diamond keeps the prose. It invites you to think critically about the people we elect, the bosses we work for, and the everyday mentorship roles we play in our own families and communities. (At one point, while I was vigorously nodding along to the section on Rachel Carson’s quiet, data-driven persistence, I jostled my knees enough that my cat gave me an offended look and relocated to the arm of the chair.)

Final Verdict
While it may not fully dethrone Guns, Germs, and Steel as Diamond’s magnum opus, Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings is a lively, thought-provoking synthesis of history, biography, and sociology. It doesn’t offer a simplistic “yes” or “no” to its subtitle; instead, it gives readers a sharp framework for understanding when and how an individual at the helm can actually tip the scales of history.

If you enjoy big-picture nonfiction, leadership studies, or historical “what-ifs,” pour yourself a strong cup of coffee and give this one a read.

Prairiefox Rating: 🦊🦊🦊.5 / 5 Foxes

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jared Diamond’s new book “Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings” is about the times and places when leaders really do make a difference in their respective fields. It’s a mainly study of leadership across business, religion, sports, and politics.

The things I liked in the book were 1.) the scientific approach – using quantitative research to determine when, where, and 2.) finding out the degree that leaders make a difference.

The example Diamond uses for interesting quantitative techniques is how to determine levels of corrpution. That's because for year these diplomats were given "Diplomatic immunity" and were not forced to pay for parking fines occured - until this was changed to deal with abuse.

To help explain this he turned to Parking tickets for Diplomats in New York City. The propensity to gain and not to pay for those tickets was seen to be a proxy for the levels of corrpution was quite ingenous.

With regard to the degree and time and place that leaders make a difference, I liked his example of modern CEOs operating in the United States. On average their pay is hundreds of times higher than that of their fellow workers.

The questions arise in the CEO example are: 1.) How can we isolate and determine their true value – and separate it from market conditions and luck? and 2.) Are their compensation packages truly justified?

Diamond finds the quantitative data and goes into extensive explanations of how and why this approach works. In the end he determines that in businesses that are fast moving and unregulated, a CEO does make a considerable difference in the company’s performance and that the pay is justified.

It’s not only the conclusion that I find interesting but the author’s approach. He talks of data where a CEO is struck down by some misfortune or even dies within office – using an unusual data source – collected mainly in Denmark.

More than this Diamond tells us that the availability of more and different data sources will allow us to understand why social occurrences happen in various fields. For example, why did classical music blossom in 19th Century Germany with the rise of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, Mozart (Austria), Schubert, Shumann, and Wagner. Data analytics is helping us change the world.

The author presents a summary of those conditions when a leader truly makes a difference. For instance in a new religion - take Mormonism as an example - it requires 1.) a backdrop for the need to believe in a leader 2.) a charismatic leader e.g., Joseph Smith. 3.) a great organiser (Brigham Young) and 4.) the ability to literally fight - when necessary - against the status quo. Diamond also discusses the role of sex in new religions e.g., the Mormons believe in polygamy at least for the leaders. (He also does the same thing for the Skakers - no sex - and for Jim Jones cult - sex sometimes in public etc..)

While I have some interest in his conclusions, I felt that the book was weighed down by the author’s need to explain his methods and justify his conclusions. Clearly the path was critical, but I felt that it dragged on a bit too much.

Perhaps the author could have added in a bit more humour as I find it unnecessarily dry.

Am I too picky? Perhaps yes. But I felt that he could have made this less of an academic paper than what typically goes into a non-fiction book.

It was a good read -not overly exciting but a good one just the same.

[Laura Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Mariner Books and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book was published on September 1st, 2026.

I never read the very popular Guns, Germs, and Steel, so perhaps my expectations for this book were too high, but I did find it disappointing. The subject was ostensibly “When do leaders matter” — is there something uniquely capable about them or are they just in the right place at the right time and someone else would have accomplished the same thing had they not been there. To expand on this “query” Diamond elaborates (at length and in a rambling, unclear, and far too repetitive manner) on the “research” methods used to investigate the question: biography, the “Hamlet test,” and natural experiments (finding experimental situations “in the wild” rather than planned in laboratory).

The book is segmented into four categories: Political, business, sports, and religious leaders. I did enjoy many of the “stories” — mini biographies of “great” figures in each category, and some high level, but interesting analysis of why some religions succeeded while others did not (surprisingly Islam was not mentioned which is a bit of an oversight? Perhaps intentional?). However, I found the depth of investigation to be shallow to the point where I felt some recaps came straight from wikipedia without checking for factual inaccuracies (of which I found several), and conclusions drawn in a sloppy fashion without adequate coverage of contributing factors or even breadth of contributing research.

The writing is (IMHO) simply bad. The narrative rambles, repeats, inserts some personal stories that were strangely ineffective at bonding us to the writer. A large number of pages are devoted to explaining various research techniques but I did not find the writing to have the clarity I look for when explaining potentially complex or unfamiliar subjects. I’m already familiar with these techniques but I wouldn’t have understood them from his verbose and incoherent descriptions. I was also a bit disturbed in some places by his content — asking his readers “do they feel strongly enough about an individual leader’s negative impact that they would sacrifice their own life in order to assassinate him or her?” He was referring to Hitler but too many people today are taking that question seriously and considering “evil” targets that have done little more than disagree with their ideology. Do we want to suggest to people that assassination is a noble endeavor as that question suggests? Similarly, he lumped Margaret Thatcher and Mao Zedong together into a category of leaders with a “mixed legacy.” Mao killed 40 - 80 million of his own people. Does Margaret Thatcher *really* fall into the same category? Small points but troubling nonetheless.

The book is really a set of vignettes loosely aligned with leadership and impact. I found it entertaining at times, though more difficult to read than it should have been. I didn’t find the main question to be an important one, nor do I think he actually came to any real conclusion, never mind one based on real data extracted from solid research methods. I would categorize this in the popular science / history category along with Mary Roach, Malcolm Gladwell and their ilk, though less entertaining.

[Francis Tapon · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 advanced copy.

[Caesar Murillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jared Diamond turns his lens from sweeping environmental and geographical forces to one of history’s oldest questions: Do individuals actually shape the world, or are we all just riding the waves of larger historical circumstances?

Rather than sticking strictly to political monarchs or military conquerors, Diamond breaks his analysis down across four distinct spheres: business (profits), religion (prophets), sports (coaches), and politics/history (kings). By examining figures ranging from Seretse Khama and Rachel Carson to legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, he explores when leadership truly bends the arc of events—and when macro-factors like geography, culture, and technology dictate the outcome regardless.

Broad, Cross-Disciplinary Scope: Comparing executive compensation and sports coaching turnarounds alongside geopolitical history creates a fresh, multi-angled perspective on leadership.

Classic Diamond Rigor: Diamond’s trademark analytical style shines. He balances narrative case studies with systematic frameworks, asking under what specific conditions a leader makes a measurable difference.

Engaging Counterfactuals: The book poses fascinating "what-if" scenarios that keep the reader hooked while grounding abstract social science theories in concrete human stories.

If you’re expecting a purely historical deep-dive like Guns, Germs, and Steel, the sports and corporate management chapters might feel like a departure. However, they serve a clear comparative purpose.

A thought-provoking, highly accessible read for non-fiction lovers, history buffs, and anyone interested in the true mechanics of power and influence. Diamond offers a nuanced middle ground between the "Great Man" theory of history and absolute determinism.

Thanks to the Netgalley for providing an advanced reader copy (ARC) in exchange for an honest review.

[Pranjal Awasthi · Rating 2.25 out of 5]

Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings left me wondering why it needed to be a book at all.

The central question is simple: Do leaders matter? As you might expect, the answer lands somewhere in the middle. Leaders are neither irrelevant nor solely responsible for the success or failure of countries, organizations, or teams.

Much of the book is devoted to exploring this rather broad middle ground. Drawing on historical examples and statistical studies, Diamond attempts to show empirically that some leaders exert a greater influence than others. While the evidence is interesting enough, the conclusions often feel intuitive and unsurprising.

Where the book truly shines is in its stories. Diamond introduces readers to leaders and coaches who are less familiar than the usual historical giants. I knew little about Seretse Khama, Botswana's founding president, and found that section particularly enlightening. Likewise, the chapters on John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach, were engaging and offered valuable insights into leadership in practice.

Ultimately, though, I found the book overextended. The core argument could likely have been conveyed in a long essay or magazine article without losing much substance. Compared with Diamond's more ambitious and influential works, such as Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, and Upheaval, this book lacks the same intellectual punch and sense of discovery.
An interesting collection of stories, but not one of Diamond's essential books.

[Daniel Astacio · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the title of this book and had to dive in immediately. I really wanted to give it 2 stars after first reading it, but when I reflect on why it was written and begin to reread it, this book definitely deserves 3 stars. Diamond tells you in advance that this is not another leadership book on how to become a great leader (there are many other books on that topic) but as it states in the title, instead wrestles with the question of WHEN do leaders matter. In sticking to this Diamond stays on the path the entire time. If you're looking for a book on what traits will improve your leadership ability, this isn't the book for you, however if you're interested in knowing when leadership actually matters or not then this is your book. Ultimately what I took away from this read is that most of the time being a CEO or Leader or Coach doesn't matter, most people can achieve the same or similar results. If you're a founder of a company or a country leadership matters much more. If you're the coach of a sports team or leading an environmental movement you're going to need the support of others regardless of how good you are, but it does make a difference if you are John Wooden, other than that, if you're Bill Belichick and have a Tom Brady on your team your contribution to being a coach could be replicated by other coaches pretty easily.

[Mark Brown · Rating 1 out of 5]

Profits, Prophets, Coaches and King's by Jared Diamond is a terrible book.

Do leaders make a difference? Well sometimes, it depends, it depends on lots of things and we cant prove it, but I think I can prove it, but maybe I can't.

This for 300 pages underlined by pedantic prose.

Some of the history and biography aspects were enjoyable, but the premis Jared Diamond keeps pushing was extremely misguided and it felt like he just kept on doubling down as the book carried on.

The lowest points were the appalling chapters on business leaders and sports coaches. Which gave us such highlights as (paraphrasing) If Jeff Bezos didnt create Amazon someone else would have. Not exactly ground breaking territory. Followed by "I can only guess why, because I haven't had the privilege of discussing with my university Chancellor or athletic director why they fired coach after coach" well why not? It cant be that hard, you both work at the same place, is this the extent of research you willing to put in, knocking on a neighbouring departments door is beyond you?

Reading an academic offer insights into business and sports is often a recipie for dissaster but Diamond came across as so detached it was hard to take anything else seriously from this point on.

A totally irrelevent book, with a few pages of anecdotal biographical histories to keep you reading.

[Tony · Rating 2.5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Gums, Germs and Steel, as well as Collapse, by Prof. Diamond, and was hoping for more of the same. I came away disappointed, however. While there was certainly some interesting content, overall I was left wondering what the point of this book was. Spoiler Alert - Leaders "matter" sometimes. At points, though, the analysis just did not seem very deep, with all sorts of variables overlooked. For example, in the prime example of sports coaching, the fact that a coach was able to recruit the best player in the country, and then win a number of consecutive championships, gave the credit to the coach rather than to the future NBA Hall of Famer. The fact that high school platers would then choose to play for the college (UCLA) was then attributed to the coach, not to the fact that players might want to play alongside Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Without a doubt, the coach has something to do with success, but in this case, it was predominantly given to the coach. In the case of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, success was attributed to Tom Brady. It doesn't seem very scientific when there are countless variables at play but seemingly little attempt for control for them. I would chock this up a pseudo-science rather than the science of leadership. At least it provided food for thought.

[LA Reads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prophets prophets, coaches and Kings by Jared diamond
3.25⭐
In his new book diamond tackles the idea of When do leaders make a difference? He looks at charisma, leadership, and whether the historical discussion of the great man theory has merit. He approaches con this conversation in a scientific a manner as possible. He uses what's called natural experiments versus clinical experiments to judge whether individuals can actually affect history.

Unfortunately so much of this conversation was well.. maybe? He belabored the concept that it was almost impossible to discuss this possibility scientifically because it's not ethical to run actual experiments that would require displacing leaders or assassinating people.

Not sure that goal of this book was achieved. However, I enjoyed that his examples were across the Gambit of quote" good leaders and atrocious ones. He mentions FDR and the king of Botswana. He mentions Hitler and the jonestown cult leader. Those portions were fascinating and he makes some good observations, particularly in the sports section. But by and large this was an avenue to talk about this particular type of charismatic personhood but I didn't feel there was much teeth to it.

[Zoë Routh · Rating 5 out of 5]

yes leaders make a difference (if the timing and content is right)

A fascinating look at leadership in political, business, sports, and religious spheres that looks at the trouble of gauging success (making an impact) of leadership and leaders and determining what was it’s about them that worked.

In some situations, the unique life story, assets, and motivation of a leader combined to create a direction change in the content of their focus. In other situations, the context was ripe for ANY leader who was educated, determined, had a vision, had resources, paid attention to detail, and a sliver of charisma to build something unique and prosperous (Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg etc). Other leaders may have also had an impact, but would have expressed it in a different way.

For religious and military leaders, broader factors such as having a military arm and a good organizer aided charismatic leaders to spread their vision and mission.

The upshot? Personality and charisma CAN impact, in certain conditions and context but it is not the only factor. Oh, we also pay CEOs too much and give them too much credit for outcomes that are generated in a complex system and context by many stakeholders.

A good read worthy of your time.