Napoleon
Hill (October 26, 1883–November 8, 1970) was an American
author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern
genre of personal-success literature. His most famous work,
Think and Grow Rich, is one of the best-selling books of
all time.
According
to his official biographer, Hill was born into poverty in
a two-room cabin in the town of Pound in rural Wise County,
Virginia. His mother died when he was ten years old. His
father remarried two years later.
At
the age of thirteen he began writing as a "mountain
reporter" for small-town newspapers. He used his earnings
as a reporter to enter law school, but soon had to withdraw
for financial reasons. The turning point in his career is
considered to have been in 1908 with his assignment, as
part of a series of articles about famous men, to interview
industrialist Andrew Carnegie, who at the time was one of
the richest men in the world. Hill discovered that Carnegie
believed that the process of success could be elaborated
in a simple formula that could be duplicated by the average
person. Impressed with Hill, Carnegie commissioned him (without
pay and only offering to provide him with letters of reference)
to interview over 500 successful men and women, many of
them millionaires, in order to discover and publish this
formula for success.
As
part of his research, Hill interviewed many of the most
famous people of the time, including Thomas Edison, Alexander
Graham Bell, George Eastman, Henry Ford, Elmer Gates, John
D. Rockefeller, Charles M. Schwab, F.W. Woolworth, William
Wrigley Jr., John Wanamaker, William Jennings Bryan, Theodore
Roosevelt, William H. Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Charles Allen
Ward and Jennings Randolph. The project lasted over twenty
years, during which Hill became an advisor to Carnegie.
The formula for rags-to-riches success that Hill and Carnegie
formulated was published initially in 1928 in his book The
Law of Success. The formula was later published in home-study
courses, including the seventeen-volume "Mental Dynamite"
series until 1941.
From
1919 to 1920 Hill was the editor and publisher of Hill's
Golden Rule magazine. In 1930 he published The Ladder to
Success. From 1933 to 1936 Hill was an unpaid advisor to
President Franklin Roosevelt.
In
1937 Hill elaborated his success formula in his most famous
work, Think and Grow Rich, which is still in print, in several
versions, and has sold more than thirty-million copies.
Think
& Grow Rich