First among equals: what makes a great leader and does it matter?
Almost two decades ago, Jared Diamond cemented his international reputation with Guns, Germs and Steel, which argued that geography and environment rather than racial differences shaped the rise and conquest of nations. Still going strong at 88, he has now written a book on leadership. This is a crowded literary space, but Diamond offers a distinctive approach. A distinguished biologist and polymath, he has little time for the Great Man theory of history popularised by the 19th--century essayist Thomas Carlyle. Altogether too subjective, he says, never mind the absence of women. Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is no better a guide, since it casts individuals as constrained by circumstance, with scant influence over events.
