Think and Grow Rich
In Think and Grow Rich, Hill draws on stories of Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and other millionaires of his generation to illustrate his principles. This book will teach you the secrets that could bring you a fortune. It will show you not only what to do but how to do it. Once you learn and apply the simple, basic techniques revealed here, you will have mastered the secret of true and lasting success.
Money and material things are essential for freedom of body and mind, but there are some who will feel that the greatest of all riches can be evaluated only in terms of lasting friendships, loving family relationships, understanding between business associates, and introspective harmony which brings one true peace of mind! All who read, understand, and apply this philosophy will be better prepared to attract and enjoy these spiritual values.
BE PREPARED! When you expose yourself to the influence of this philosophy, you may experience a CHANGED LIFE which can help you negotiate your way through life with harmony and understanding and prepare you for the accumulation of abundant material riches.
Reviews (202)
Skip this book
If you're looking for an edge in your pursuit of success, skip this book. 20 years ago I bought this book and it's ideas hook, line and sinker; however, after spending two decades on application it's apparent that the principles in this book are mostly nonsense. I am only going to take the time to highlight two pieces of misinformation in this book: visualization, and "the secret." This book touts visualizing your goals as a method to speed up/ensure attainment. Research shows that the opposite is true. Visualizing your goals and imagining how it would feel to have achieved them has been show to consistently reduce drive and motivation. This book is full of misinformation like this, that if diligently applied will be counterproductive. There is "the secret" alluded to in this book, and the subject of a nonsense DVD and book by the same title. The most important warning that I can give someone younger, after 20 years of time wasted looking for secrets is this: the only free cheese is in a mouse trap. Secrets to success do NOT exist. Time spent looking for "secrets" or applying them is time that could be invested in getting better at the fundamentals of whatever arena you are in. One of the most basic examples would be personal finance: the only people getting rich off the "secrets of wealth" are the people selling those "secrets." Ultimately there are just a handful of things that matter in personal finance - get out of debt, live on a budget, invest in assets with a decent balance of risk & return, have a rainy day fund (and funds for other things you know are coming - Christmas gifts, college, etc.). This book is selling a fantasy that appeals to deep biases that all humans have. Do yourself a favor, skip this book.
BE CAREFUL WHAT VERSION YOU BUY!
Amazon has done us a huge disservice by lumping all the reviews for the various "original" versions of this book together. The version I purchased (black cover with money on the bottom, kindle version) is riddled with errors where the publisher evidently SCANNED the book in and then didn't bother to edit the results. Page numbers appear randomly in the middle of paragraphs, "m" appears where clearly "in" was intended and in some cases paragraphs just end in the middle of a sentence. This is a great book but some of the publishers have done a terrible job reproducing it and Amazon isn't helping by grouping very different copies together in the same review group. I hope to update this review when I find a less crappy copy of this book, but avoid the version with the black cover with money on the bottom. (See pictures)
Nonsense
The content is nonsense, tons of rubbish included in the book. Two reasons why i rated this book so low are: 1. In a large portion of the book, the author praises his own work. He even included a letter (which cover pages) of which only purpose is praising the book itself and have nothing to do with the content. By the time I read that the 13 principles in this book will make me rich, I’d realized that the rest of the content would be all rubbish, and my prediction turned out to be right. 2. The point he makes is all misleading. Whenever he addresses any point, the author COMPLETELY and DELIBERATELY hides the opposite side of the arguments and just continue praising the greatness of his point and support by various examples which, every now and then, are falsified.
Timeless life lessons from one of the greatest self-development authors
Despite the age of this book, I found the underlying lessons it contained to be highly relevant to my life today. The most valuable ideas I gathered from this book: 1) You cannot acquire great wealth without a concrete plan for attaining that wealth, a serious passion that compels you to act on your plan continuously, and great faith that your plan will allow you to succeed. 2) Many of the world's greatest achievers were passionate to the point of obsession, and in order to emulate their success you must cultivate a desire until it becomes an obsession. 3) Material success does not come solely as a result of knowledge acquisition, but rather from one's ability to organize and transform specialized knowledge such that it can be delivered to a wide audience in the form of a product or service. 4) Persistence often makes the difference between success and failure. It is a state of mind that is essential to success and can be overcome through effort. 5) One of the common attributes of highly successful people is the ability to reach decisions quickly and to change them slowly. Most of us are the opposite.
TIMELESS
In your journey for success, and Ive read over 150 books on business and personal development, this is the godfather. The only true place to start. But be weary, because this book requests you physically do things outside of reading, such as writing your daily goals, writing your 6 steps and reciting them daily. You may consider these tasks mundane but this is the subconcious training that takes you from reading a book to changing your life. #DoTheWork requested in the book, otherwise it will be a waste of time to even read it.
Forget it, go buy a real finance book
This book is nuttier than a fruitcake. I turned a blind eye to some of the hippie stuff and pulled some useful lessons out of chapters one and two, but I couldn't make it any further. It reminds me of "The Secret," but maybe the first paragraph of chapter three would help explain: "Faith is the head chemist of the mind. When faith is blended with the vibration of thought, the subconscious mind instantly picks up the vibration, translates it into its spiritual equivalent, and transmits it to Infinite Intelligence, as in the case of prayer." What is this crap? If you want to learn how to manage your finances, go invest in books like "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," "The Richest Man in Babylon," or "The Automatic Millionaire." If you want to believe you can get rich by sitting in a circle in the woods singing Kumbaya and eating organic couscous and not bathing, this is the book for you.
This book is a real game changer!
I chose to read this book because I have met several people who have read it and they say, it's a game changer . This book is filled with confirmation , spiritual truth , and wisdom beyond your imagination. Reading this book could change your life if you adhere to the philosophies of many great men; including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and the great Dale Carnegie. These brilliant business minds all used the philosophies put together in one book written by Napoleon Hill...This book is brilliant!
I Found this in a street gutter! But it is on my top shelf for life as the best ever personal growth books. Bought Kindle vers
This book is a definitive classic and is really focused on how to manage oneself in order to enjoy a productive and successful life. This goes on the top shelf along with Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People for life long lessons on developing emotional intelligence and self-discipline although they were both written decades before the concept of EI was coined. Although first published in the early part of the 20th century, and while some terms are now dated, the concepts remain solid and this version has been revised with more modern stories of highly successful people. The stories which are intermixed within each chapter bring the concepts to life and keep the book lighter and more approachable. That said, this is a book worthy of study as each chapter addresses one of the key concepts or steps to leading a meaningful and productive life. This one competes to be on any life list of personal growth/development books to study and re-read and ought to be on the mandatory read list for all youths who aspire to "do" anything with their lives - to heck with Grapes of Wrath (gasp!). By the way, I after I purchased the kindle version, I found a hard copy abandoned along the beach bluffs and this "sign" inspired me to really dig into this book. It was nice to have the hard copy because when I find a book like this, I underline, notate and otherwise mark it up to highlight my personal take-aways. But I'm glad I also have the kindle so that I ALWAYS have it at my side. Buy both! (or perhaps you may find one in the gutter as I did).
Let no one tell you NOT to buy this book!
Stop and ask yourself: How did anyone, anywhere, at any time, do something so incredible that history will remember only them for it? You might try to separate each great person in history as being separate cases, each with different reasons; Napolean Hill disagrees. He sought to explain how great people become great. How the impossible ever became possible. This book is an explanation of the science behind success itself. It's basically a bible for your life if you live off success like most people. I'm going to re-read this every January I imagine. It's too relevant to my life for me not to annually remind myself of it's teachings. As much as I'm up-selling it, and as much as it deserves to be up-sold to everyone, everywhere; I had to take a star off of my review due to a good portion of the book being the writing ranting about conversations between business men. I get that the writer was obsessed, but he let it flood too far into the pages. As someone reading this, wanting to hear more about the science of success and the rules it underlines; I'm really not interested in several pages describing a handful of men talking about business proposals. "They sounded crazy when they said it, I get it, get a move on" I thought a few times while reading, but otherwise that's a very acceptable con in light of the pros to this book. Pros: + Learn a set of guidelines for your life which will invariably help you better yourself. This isn't divination, and it's not religion: this is the science of success incarnate, and it is fact. You can not discredit it; only yourself by denying it. + Not too long, not too short. The book isn't big by any standard, so anyone should be able to read it through. It's also not so small that it leaves you feeling like it's missing something. It's the optimal length in my opinion. + Countless examples are provided to give better context to the lessons it underlines. There are sections where the book will instruct you to take up certain habits, and it will also take time to explain them so you know why you're being instructed in the first place. Cons: - As I said; the writer goes on a few tangents. Times where he starts up a story about some person making some decision to do something so incredible that we need to hear about it in grave detail for a few more pages. Again, I get that the writer was enthralled with these stories, but when making a book strictly about the science behind them: it's a better idea to stay on topic as consistently as possible. Bottom Line: Buy this book if you want to succeed at anything in life. It offers the best birds eye perspective on how success actually works, versus how we're brought up to believe it does.
Out of date and the author may have been a fraud to start with
Pretty much my review title. Couldn't get through this and I actually do believe positive thinking supports success. How else do you expect to have the courage to get out there and take risk? Did research and found out the author's wife helped with the book greatly but wasn't credited. Also, he never was particularly rich himself, or at least, couldn't keep it. According to what I read, he was repeatedly wanted for arrest. Read because it came up in my circles so often but honestly, just felt wrong. One must take action. A better book from someone who does have a better track record is Get Rich Lucky Bitch, or even The Energy of Money, though I vastly prefer the first.
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