Intriguing insights into just how much a leader matters (or doesn’t).
A wide-ranging examination of the impact of leaders on some key institutions.
Retired professor Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel, 1997) takes a jaunty, entertaining look at the roles that individual leaders play—and the limits of those roles in politics, business, sports, and religion. He moves between beguiling biographical sketches of some key figures and more technical statistical analysis of data regarding the impact of leaders on the success or failure of their businesses, teams, governments, or religions. His assessment is often based on what happened when those leaders were removed from their positions, whether by death or some other means. He concludes, unsurprisingly, that depending on the circumstances, some leaders have more impact than others and few pass what he calls the “Hamlet test,” the assumption that, for example, no other contemporary could have produced the works of art that Shakespeare did. It’s not in its conclusions but on a more granular level that the book fascinates. Diamond will convince even the most sports-averse that studying the effects of replacing one basketball coach for another provides insight into similar replacement of business executives and national leaders. He focuses in on relatively unfamiliar figures—like Seretse Khama, the first leader of Botswana after the country achieved independence, and Lynda and Stewart Resnick, founders of the American pomegranate juice industry—and makes a case that they were uniquely situated to achieve outstanding results. He makes a convincing argument that the success or failure of a religion depends not just on a “charismatic founder” but an “outstanding organizer” and maybe a military leader and backs up his point with studies of the Mormon Church, the Shakers, and Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple. His nimble, irreverent approach and insatiable curiosity lead to enlightening connections that stodgier academics wouldn’t notice.
Intriguing insights into just how much a leader matters (or doesn’t).Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2026
ISBN: 9780063517660
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Mariner Books
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2026
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.
Helbig and Norman present a game plan for making leadership more responsively human.
In this expanded update to The Psychological Safety Playbook: Lead More Powerfully by Being More Human (2023), the authors provide “practical strategies for responding to resistance, sparking change, embodying the change we want to see, and moving forward deliberately,” specifically in a business setting. They suggest ways to encourage what they call “changemakers” through the use of five key “plays” from their playbook: Communicate Courageously, Master the Art of Listening, Manage Your Reactions (“shift from automatic reaction to conscious response to stay better connected to yourself and others”), Embrace Risk and Failure, and Design Inclusive Rituals. The goal is to ensure that organizational cultures promote psychological safety, guided by leaders who “walk the talk” by emphasizing their own humanity at every turn. (“We must be the first to share our own failures with our teams, which will start to make it possible for others to do the same.”) This call for example-setting is sounded throughout the book as Helbig and Norman urge their target audience (leaders and would-be leaders) to go beyond mere instruction and instead embody the qualities they want to see in their subordinates, such as continuous learning, active curiosity, and self-reflection. Each chapter includes a detailed “Recommended Reading” section and text with extensive numbered and bulleted points formatted to make the core concepts more immediately digestible. The authors effectively employ clear and empathetic prose to assure readers that psychological safety is slow to build and quick to break, observing that such safety requires steady attention and delivers outsize payoffs as a result. They refreshingly ground a great deal of the material in psychology and neuroscience, pointing out, for instance, that research has demonstrated that the parasympathetic nervous system responds to honest appreciation, which improves creative thinking. Some wistful readers might consider some of the authors’ suggestions beyond the reach of their own organizations, as when group facilitators are advised to “gently intervene when someone dominates the conversation,” but hope springs eternal.
A passionate and accessible guide to humanizing the workplace.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9798993550503
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Crazy Idea Press
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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