Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings - Jared Diamond

⭐7.5/10

Jared Diamond is back! He is now 88 years old and I really had no idea he was still writing. I am always super skeptical when someone that old is still putting out work, but Jared will always be my guy, and this is a topic I've debated at length with Weview's other contributor. 

I am often on the record saying that leaders don't matter, but I usually only mean coaches in basketball or billionaire CEOs rather than, say, politicians. Well Diamond takes on that very topic, giving examples of those 3 plus religious leaders. 

To start, I was totally sold. I love Diamonds style, and he opens with two fantastic stories of the first president of Botswana as well as an environmental writer (I found the second to be a huge stretch because she wasn't really even try to be a leader). Still, they were new stories to me, and were those wonderful examples of learning more about the world and history in a digestible and interesting fashion. Clearly leaders matter! 

But as the book went along, I found the case less and less compelling. The next leaders were the big CEOs (Bezos, Musk, Zuck) whom I know a lot more about, and while Diamond says he doesn't think they are good people, he says they are good leaders because look at the results! He does point out that if these people didn't exist, something similar would have likely emerged anyways, but I still found the case flimsly. My biggest thing is the luck factor, which I always say is the biggest factor for any leader having success. Diamond also acknowledges this, but not to my degree. I would say that the most common criticism of Diamond's is that he can be overly sure of causation, and I think that's true here. Even after the chapter, i still think these are just a group of morons who got lucky or had baked in advantages. 

Then he moves on to sports, the area where I'd say I have the most knowledge, and probably more than Diamond. He again analyzes the data, but these datasets are so weak that it's one of those things that make me wonder about the conclusions he draws from his data that I know nothing about. He talks about basketball coaches - notably John Wooden, who of course you'd have to acknowledge was a good coach, but the way he comes to conclusions doesn't work for me. This is less a matter of luck and more a matter of other factors. Is Wooden much better than average with Kareem/ Walton? Is Pop anything without Duncan? Kerr with Curry? Also factoring in the many ways of being a good coach (tactician vs inspirational vs development) and it's impossible to draw any type of conclusion. 

He then talks about religion which I thought I'd have an issue with, but I thought this part was mostly fine or hard to argue. I mean, all of the parts had interesting segments, but I can't say it shifted my thinking much. 

Hard to put a number on this one. It's probably too short for this big a topic, and comes to conclusions too hastily. Not a bad book, but my own conclusion that people should be institutionalized at 88 remains strong.