Think and Grow Rich!
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| THE EDITOR’S FOREWORD BEFORE THE CLOSE of the first decade of the st century, America and the world faced a financial and economic abyss that came close to collapsing the world economic system. By most estimates, the meltdown would have been far worse—up to five times greater—than that of the Great Depression. Billions of people could have been ruined and hundreds of thousands of businesses destroyed. Like ducks in a shooting gallery, one giant financial institution and big business after another teetered on the brink of disaster—Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Bros, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, General Motors. Many failed. All were imperiled. We were facing an economic black hole. Today, for the moment, the ship seems to have righted, the “black hole of 2008 avoided. During the Great Depression of the s there was born a cultural and publishing phenomenon that was tailor-made to help down-on-their- luck, down-in-the-dumps people survive the most trying financial difficulties. It was the landmark book Think and Grow Rich!, researched and written by Napoleon Hill during the Depression years. No book ever written had more relevance then, or has today, as Americans and other people around the globe continue to rebuild and strengthen their economies and try to plan fora personal economic future that despite many good signs and steps taken still remains uncertain. So get ready. 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. What they learned helped many survive the Depression and many since then to go onto achieve great success and wealth in the years since those desperate times. 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 Personal Success and Positive Mental Attitude movements have flowed. Every book, CD, DVD, podcast, speech, seminar, online resource or other product on personal success that has been produced since Think and Grow Rich! was first published does little more than rediscover or repackage 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 52 pages of endnotes, and the appendices in this book. They contain 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 true 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 Napoleon Hill himself. So again, I urge you, 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 used another version of Think and Grow Rich!, a different sort of reward awaits you. The edition of Think and Grow Rich! you are now holding, as its subtitle indicates, is the Original Version, Restored and Revised TM Remember that Dr. Hill first published Think and Grow Rich! and the moneymaking 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 a deep economic depression. These and other changes in the original manuscript 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 s. Ironically, because of the enormous economic upheavals, dislocations, and uncertainties that have swept America and the world since the near collapse of the world economy in 2008, 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 st century as it did to those who came before—and perhaps more so. The version of Think and Grow Rich! you at this moment are reading restores the book to its original form by reinstating material that was edited out more than five decades ago. (A few original passages are not restored in the main body of the text because of their obsolescence, but these passages are fully quoted and explained in the endnotes.) In addition, the original “look” of Think and Grow Rich! has been recreated. The typeface used, 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 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 made sense to do so (for example, using updated 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 was made solely to remove any 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 and only 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!: Download 3.05 Mb. Share with your friends:
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