Of the triumvirate of key self-help books in the 20th century,
Napoleon Hill’s classic
Think and Grow Rich
rocketed to the top of the bestseller lists in 1937 and has continued
as a bestseller to the present day. Think and Grow Rich has reportedly
sold more than 30 million copies since 1937.
Born in 1883 in a two-room log cabin in
Virginia’s
Blue Ridge
Mountains, Napoleon Hill worked as a newspaper reporter to finance his
way through
Georgetown University Law School. The quality of his
reporting prompted Robert Taylor, a magazine publisher, to employ Hill
to write a series of success stories of famous men, starting with Andrew
Carnegie.
Carnegie was so impressed from the interview that he commissioned Hill
to complete what would become a twenty-year assignment – interviewing
over 500 of the most successful men in America in order to distill from
their experiences a common success formula.
Hill published his first interpretation of this individual achievement philosophy in 1928 as the multi-volume
Law of Success, exactly twenty years after the
Carnegie
interview. Think and Grow Rich was a modern abridgment of that set,
published with the purpose of inspiring the nation to throw off the
fears of the
Great Depression. What he achieved was a landmark volume,
one which has set the bar to measure all other self-help books against.
Only two other books have achieved anywhere near this book’s following:
Wattle’s
Science of Getting Rich, and
Haanel’s
Master Key System.
Hill described his efforts in an essay “You Can Work Your Own Miracles”:
“For twenty odd years I was forced to struggle, in mastering the
problems incidental to my work in organizing the world’s first practical
philosophy of success. First, I was forced to struggle in preparing
myself with the necessary knowledge to produce the philosophy. Secondly,
I was forced to struggle to maintain myself economically while doing
the research necessary to organize the philosophy. Then I met with still
greater necessity to struggle while gaining recognition from the world
for myself and the philosophy.
“Twenty
years of struggle without any direct financial compensation is an
experience not calculated to give one sustained hope, but it was the
price I had to pay for a philosophy which was destined to benefit untold
numbers of people, many of whom were not born when I began my work.
“Discouraging? Heartbreaking? Not at all, for I recognized from the
beginning that out of my struggle would come triumph and victory in
proportion to the labors invested in my task. In this hope I have not
been disappointed, but I have been overwhelmed with the bountiful manner
in which the world has responded and paid me tribute for the long years
of struggle that went into my work.
“Also, I have gained from my struggle something of still greater and
more profound value. It is recognition that through my struggles I have
reached deeply into the spiritual wells of my soul, and there I have
found powers available for every purpose I may desire -powers I never
knew I possessed, and never would have discovered except by the means of
struggle!
“From my experiences with struggle I discovered that the Creator never
singles out an individual for an important service to mankind without
first testing him, through struggle, in proportion to the nature of the
service he is to render. Thus, through struggle, I learned to interpret
the laws, purposes, and working plans of the Creator as they related to
me and to mankind in general.”
And that is what makes Hill’s work so important. Only two other authors
of his century presented self-help students with a certain plan for
their life to put it on a chosen track. This is what places Hill with
Wattles
and Haanel in the triumvirate of 20th century self-help classics. These
all cover the same key points, and give the same answers to life’s
questions. Hill, in fact, credits Haanel with his success through a
personal letter years before Think and Grow Rich was written.
How to Think and Grow Rich
Also available from Lulu.com as paperback, 347 pages
Law of Success in 16 Lessons
HOW TO MAKE A GENIUS is as little understood as geniuses themselves.
