Excerpt: Editor's Foreword

IF THIS IS your first exposure to Think and Grow Rich!, I urge you to stop reading at the end of the third paragraph below and turn immediately to “The Author’s Preface” on page 1. The beginning of a life-altering experience of the most profound kind awaits you there—an experience that has given thousands of men and women the key to success every year since Napoleon Hill first published this landmark work.

Think and Grow Rich! is the ONLY “how-to” book or other resource on personal success that you must have. It will help you grow rich—it will enrich your life—in all ways that matter, not just financially and materially. The ideas behind Think and Grow Rich! are the wellspring from which all legitimate “Personal Success” and “Positive Mental Attitude” movements have flowed. Every book, tape, CD, DVD, or other product on personal success that has been produced since Think and Grow Rich! was first published does little more than rediscover Dr. Hill’s ideas and principles.

If you are reading Think and Grow Rich! for the first time, pay no attention for now to footnotes, the extensive endnotes, and appendices. They provide information that will one day expand your appreciation for the book, but during your first reading, they will simply slow you down and interrupt your learning process. When you have completed your first reading (there will be many!) and thus begun your journey on the road to high personal achievement, financial independence, and outstanding success in life, return to this foreword for the additional insights it provides into Think and Grow Rich! and the philosophy it entails. Study the endnotes, where you will gain further insight into such things as Positive Mental Attitude, the era in which Napoleon Hill worked and wrote, the people he wrote about, and of course Napoleon Hill himself. So again, I urge you, the first-time reader: Do not hesitate. Waste no time. Turn to the “Author’s Preface” to begin your study—and DO IT NOW!

If you are not a newcomer to Napoleon Hill’s work and have already read another version of Think and Grow Rich!, a different sort of reward awaits you. The edition of Think and Grow Rich! you now hold, as its subtitle indicates, is the Original Version, Restored and Revised. Remember that Dr. Hill first published Think and Grow Rich! and the money-making secret it contains in 1937, at the depths of the Great Depression. In 1960, he published a revised edition of the book, which deleted many sections that appeared in the original. Much of this deleted material focused on specific matters related to the environment of an economic depression. These and other changes in the original manuscript evidently were made so as not to “date” the book. Copies of the 1960 edition and its subsequent printings have, until now, been just about the only ones available in bookstores and most libraries since the 1960s. Ironically, because of the enormous economic upheavals, dislocations, and uncertainties that have swept America and the world during the 1980s, 1990s, and into the new century, much of what was omitted from the 1960 edition turns out to be amazingly relevant to circumstances and conditions that prevail today. Think and Grow Rich! in its original form speaks as clearly and meaningfully to people in the 21st century as it did to those in the early and later 20th century—and perhaps more so.

The version of Think and Grow Rich! you are now reading restores the book to its original form by reinstating most of the material that was removed four decades ago. (A few original passages have not been restored in the main body of the text because of their obsolescence, but, for the most part, these passages are fully quoted and explained in the endnotes.) In addition, the original “look” of Think and Grow Rich! has been re-created. The typeface that has been selected, combined with Dr. Hill’s creative use of italics and “all caps” words, gives a vigorous, enthusiastic “visual quality” to the text.

While this new version, in the main, restores Think and Grow Rich! to its original form and look, the book has also been revised throughout. In every chapter there are minor changes in punctuation, terminology, and, occasionally, phrasing. Financial and economic data are updated where it makes sense to do so (for example, using today’s dollar values in illustrations and figures), so that readers will not constantly be forced to do in-the-head calculations to make comparisons. Each such revision of word or figure is made solely to remove any artificial obstacles to a full understanding of Dr. Hill’s ideas. The goal at every step has been to make Think and Grow Rich! as user-friendly as possible for today’s reader.

This edition is revised also in that it is the first fully annotated version of Think and Grow Rich! ever published, the first with footnotes, endnotes, and appendices, and it contains the first comprehensive index to assist readers in using the book more effectively. Most of the annotations will be of interest primarily to the Napoleon Hill devotee who seeks greater understanding of the historical context in which Dr. Hill created Think and Grow Rich!. While his message itself is timeless, many of the persons, events, and circumstances he discusses in his commentary and illustrations are no longer familiar to most readers. Think and Grow Rich!: The Original Version, Restored and Revised aims—in the sense of a “revised standard version”—to make all of these things as clear as possible without in any way interfering with or disturbing the integrity and message of the original work.

What to make of Think and Grow Rich!? Dr. Hill’s book is a publishing phenomenon. Year after year, people continue to “discover” it—tucked away inconspicuously on a bookstore or library shelf or passed along from a family member, friend, or associate—and they have read it, loved it, and used it to turn their lives around and their powers of creativity and imagination loose.

The first copy of Think and Grow Rich! was sold in 1937. Eleven years later, in February 1948, Coronet magazine polled 300 successful young men and women, asking, “What book or books most influenced your life and contributed to your success?” Think and Grow Rich! was ranked fourth on the list. In September 1986—38 years and eight U. S. Presidents later—USA Today published a list of the “10 top-selling paperback books about investments” in America for that month. Despite the fact that it is only in the most general sense an investment book, being primarily about investing in yourself and others, Think and Grow Rich! ranked No. 1 on the list. (Some books it beat? How to Buy Stocks, The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need, and Getting Yours.)

Some years ago the Library of Congress conducted a survey asking what books most influenced readers’ lives. The top answer, by a wide margin, was The Bible. In second and third place were, respectively, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and Think and Grow Rich! by Napoleon Hill. In 2002, BusinessWeek magazine published “The BusinessWeek Best-Seller List.” in its October 14 edition Almost incredibly, Think and Grow Rich! ranked tenth on the list of the current 15 top-selling paperback business books—65 years after the first copy of the book was purchased!

Walk into any well-stocked bookstore in America and you will find a few paperback copies of Think and Grow Rich! (usually the 1960 version in one of its manifestations) in the business or self-motivation sections. Think and Grow Rich! endures because it works.

For three years it was my privilege to serve (on an independent contractor basis) as the first editor-in-chief of Think & Grow Rich Newsletter, published by Imagine, Inc., for the Napoleon Hill Foundation, a charitable organization he established to carry on his life’s research and work. My experience in that position not only provided me with the insight and confidence needed to undertake this restoration/revision of Think and Grow Rich!, but also introduced me to the living power of this book in changing people’s lives. I was exposed to the kind of correspondence and phone calls that pour in daily from people throughout the world, in all walks of life and in all circumstances, who have read Think and Grow Rich!, applied its principles diligently, and attained self-confidence, self-understanding, and levels of success that most people only dare dream of. You may one day find yourself giving such a personal testimonial.

Yet there is more to Think and Grow Rich! than the power of the principles it explains. Part of the book’s appeal is the uncanny, almost prophetic insights of Napoleon Hill about matters and issues that are very much “today.” He talked about such concepts as networking, participatory management, excellence in customer service, visualization techniques, brainstorming, and the use of written goals and objectives long before any of these became corporate or psychological buzzwords—even before, in most instances, the terms themselves were created. He spends almost an entire chapter discussing the concept of mentorship, although he never refers to it as such and puts an unusual Hill twist on it. His speculations on human brain functions anticipate the whole area of right brain/left brain research. Any one of the numerous self-analysis tests scattered throughout his pages is thoroughly applicable today and well worth the price of this book alone. Fifty years before the word “downsizing” would come into vogue, Napoleon Hill spelled out in specific detail the perfect strategy and tactics to use when one finds oneself suddenly forced to look for a job or try to start a business. His analysis of what capitalism is and means (in Chapter 6) is the most compelling and persuasive ever made and should be required reading for everyone.

No matter what town, state, or country one may live in, no personal success library can ever be complete without this restored, revised, fully annotated, and fully indexed version of Think and Grow Rich!. It contains essentially all of the book’s original contents, edited for today’s reader. It includes restored material that makes it more relevant and valuable today than it was when it was first created. Teaching the practical steps to the attainment of financial independence and even great wealth is one of the main purposes of Think and Grow Rich!. But the greatest value of this wonderful book is not that it can make you financially successful, but that it can help YOU—or ANYONE—achieve success however you may define it, and help you get whatever else it is that you desire from life.

To paraphrase what is perhaps Napoleon Hill’s most famous statement:
“Whatever, friend, you can conceive and believe, you can achieve!”
Think and Grow Rich!: The Original Version, Restored and Revised shows you step-by-step just how to do it.

Ross Cornwell