May great success be yours—live your dream!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This new edition of Think and Grow Rich! was made possible with the help and support of many individuals in many places. I want to thank my partner, Del Gurley, and his wife (and my sister) Barbara Cornwell Gurley.
Del, who epitomizes The Think and Grow Rich Philosophy, has believed in this project as much as I have and supported it in ways too numerous to mention. I cherish the many Master Mind Alliance hours the Gurleys and
I discussed the project, traded ideas, and dreamed the dream of making
Think and Grow Rich! more relevant and understandable for future generations of high achievers.
I appreciate more than I can say the wise counsel and sterling service of Nigel Yorwerth, the finest literary agent and publishing advisor I have ever known, and his highly able partner, Patricia Spadaro. I am also grateful to Keith Pearson, Ryan Ratliff, and The Voice of Aventine Press, which published the first edition of this book.
Thanks are due also to Dr. Caron St. John, former director of the Spiro
Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at Clemson University. Her intelligent counsel and sage advice, especially in the proposal stage of this project, were valuable and are greatly appreciated.
An unusual venture such as this requires the services of a topflight intellectual property attorney. I found one in Jim Bagarazzi of the Dority Manning law firm, who helped us avoid the pitfalls and get through the minefields of copyright questions, contract negotiations, and trademark law.
Thanks, Jim, for helping us protect the tremendous investment we have made in this project.
Tonya Flemming performed magnificently in helping type the manuscript, while Patsy Melsheimer did a wonderful job of proofreading it and keeping its editor from looking foolish. Beth Moore of Gurley
Management made sure the bills got paid on time, shared generously of her

computer resources, and could always be counted on, with a wonderful smile, to bring sunshine into many gloomy days at the office. To Elaine
Payne and Lynn Whitfield, founders of the Low Carb Connoisseur, thanks for being a source of Internet inspiration and ideas, for helpful suggestions about publishing options, and for other invaluable services.
Many friends and acquaintances supported meas I sought to complete this work. They were always interested in, and always asked about, how things were going, and never ceased to offer encouragements along the way.
Chief among these many faithful are the late Don Bolt and Marietta
(brother- and sister-in-law nonpareil, David Bryan Martin, Jim and Sally
Richardson, the late Bobby Abrams and his wife, Alice Gene, John and
Joyce Geer, and Sonny and Gervais Emanuel. Special thanks are due to Dr.
Jerry and Sally Trapnell for so many kindnesses extended.
Thanks also to historian Dr. Don McKale, English Professor Bill
Koon, children’s book author Betsy Byars, and Jim and Kate Palmer of
Warbranch Press for their advice about publishers and the use of literary agents. Thanks also to Rives Boo Cheney for an early collaboration through which I was first introduced to Think and Grow Rich!
I would be remiss in not expressing gratitude to Bob Proctor, Paul
Martinelli and all the LifeSuccess Consultants they have trained around the globe. Their support of this book and their work in initiating and spreading
Master Mind Study Groups throughout the world is a great service. While this project is not associated or affiliated with the Napoleon Hill
Foundation, I would also be remiss in not expressing thanks to three individuals long associated with it its late chairman, W. Clement Stone, for not vetoing my service for three years as the first executive editor of Think
& Grow Rich Newsletter (and for contributing a monthly column to it);
Michael J. Ritt, Jr, retired executive director of the Foundation, for insights about Napoleon Hill and his work, derived from dinner and many other conversations and Dr. Charles Johnson, who is Hill’s nephew and current chairman of the Foundation, for sharing personal anecdotes and observations about his uncle and for letting me sit at the oaken desk (now in
Conway, SC) at which Hill wrote many of his books.
In undertaking a research project like this, one quickly comes to understand the virtues and value of good research librarians. I owe thanks to many for their dedicated efforts to assist me in tracking down some obscure fact, bit of biographical detail, or piece of arcana. Special thanks to Lois Sill

and Jan Comfort of the Robert Muldrow Cooper Library at Clemson
University; to Pamela Gibson of The Eaton Florida History Room, Manatee
County (Florida) Central Library Sharon Sumpter, assistant archivist,
Archive Department, and Hector Escobar of the Theodore M. Hesburgh
Library, University of Notre Dame Rose Donoway and Debby Bennett of the Caroline County (Maryland) Public Library Leslie Litoff of the
Wilmette (Illinois) Public Library and Rick Stringer of the Schreyer
Business Library, Penn State University. These individuals went out of their way to assist me with general research on Napoleon Hill and Think and
Grow Rich! and specialized research on the likes of Edwin C. Barnes, Stuart
Austin Wier, Dan Halpin, and the elusive Mr. RU. Darby—not to mention numerous other individuals and matters too numerous to relate.
Also appreciated are the kind assistance of Lois Carroll, Aimee
Duncan, and manager Felicia Hardy of the Rourk Branch of the Brunswick
County Library in Shallotte, North Carolina, where I spent many fruitful hours engaged in early marketing tasks for the book the genealogical research conducted so graciously by Ronda Darbie (unrelated to RU, as it turned out and a brief biographical sketch, included in the endnotes, which was written for me by Dan D. Halpin about his father, who had a fascinating connection to the Hill family and was an exemplar of Think and
Grow Rich! success. Thanks, too, to Joseph IsaacValenzuela of Fullerton,
California, for pointing out a citation error that has now been corrected and which gets us closer to the always elusive goal of a perfect manuscript. (An aside Neither I, nor any of my research librarian friends, was able to find any biographical information about the enigmatic RU. Darby, who is featured so prominently in two of Napoleon Hill’s key anecdotes. I hope some reader of this book knows exactly who Darby was and what he did later in life and that he or she will get in touch with me so that I can include that information in a future edition.)
I feel a deep sense of gratitude to my late parents, John and Vivian
Cornwell, who had an enormous positive influence on my life, outlook, and personality. They nourished my curiosity, engendered in me a love of reading, and always believed in me. I also owe a great debt to the late David
Martin and his late wife, Thelma, for sharing their love and values and for allowing me towed their daughter more than four decades ago.
There are four special people to whom I also wish to offer thanks,
together, if written words can ever serve as recompense for generosity

shared and knowledge imparted. To my tenth-grade English teacher at
Anderson Boys High School, D. Oliver Bowman, who first made me aware of what literature means. To Dr. Rob Roy McGregor of Anderson, my high-school French, Latin, Russian, and life teacher, who took a special interest in meas a student and imparted tome an unquenchable thirst for learning and personal achievement. To Professor Charles Cornwell (perhaps distantly related, who shared with mean abiding love of writing, travel,
good wit and repartee, and good reading. And to Professor Tony Abbott,
like Charlie a professor at Davidson College, who was the finest, most insightful teacher imaginable and was the only professor I ever had who received not just one, but two standing ovations after lectures I was fortunate enough to attend. Good teachers are treasures that must be always honored and remembered.
Finally, I would like to thank three persons whose love and support meant everything tome and who were my inspiration for undertaking my work on this book—my wife Betty for her patience throughout the “ordeal”
of getting the book finished my firstborn, Johannah, a stalwart supporter who has become the kind of success story that Napoleon Hill would have loved to write about and my equally accomplished daughter and namesake,
Anne-Ross. “Yushannah” and Little Dipper you believed in this book completely, and your positive attitude and encouragement gave me a reason to get the job done.
Ross Cornwell January 2015

Download 3.05 Mb.

Share with your friends: