Napoleon wrote the book...but didn't own the ideas.
So...Napoleon Hill wrote "Think and Grow Rich," a timeless book on acquiring limitless wealth in a lifetime while exploring the intersection between personal development, business, finance, and philosophy, amongst other genres.
As of 2022, thing's sold 70+ million copies with no signs of stopping.
And the author is Napoleon Hill...
But he did not own it.
He did not own the ideas in the book he wrote.
Rather, he wrote them in place of Andrew Carnegie, one of the wealthiest men ever.
A bit about Andrew
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish-American industrialist, businessman, and philanthropist who immigrated from Scotland to Pittsburgh, PA, at 12.
Andrew was one to revolutionize the US steel industry as we know it today, having built Carnegie Steel Company and sold it to JPMorgan for $303.45M then ($10.67B today.) Through his philanthropy, he advocated for the use of wealth for societal betterment. He was pro-taxes, societal good, and supporting scientific research - documenting all these in his famed 1889 article, The Gospel of Wealth.
He is easily remembered as Pittsburgh is a steel city from his endeavors and has Carnegie Mellon University in his memorabilia.
Andrew Meets Napoleon
In his sunset years, Andrew, alongside his comrades - Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John D. Rockefeller - found it illegal to die with their immense information. He needed someone to distill his experiences, tactics, and philosophies and chronologize them.
And that someone happened to be 25-year-old Napoleon Hill, a simple journalist working on his dad's local wealth magazine.
Andrew believed that anyone could (and still can) succeed with the insights he had, so he took Napoleon under his wing as a mentee and told him to write his thoughts down in chronological fashion.
And thus, "Think and Grow Rich" came to be.
And in the words of Bob Proctor:
"Andrew probably made 50 millionaires over his lifetime; Napoleon Hill made millions of them."
Which has me thinking:
Mansa, the richest man ever lived - Andrew peaked at no. 3.
Story for another day.
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~T.K.K
You may buy Think and Grow Rich here.
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