Did "Think and Grow Rich" Predict the Future?

  by Roland Hulme

 
Napoleon Hill Proves It's Deja Vu All Over Again

The best self-improvement book ever written

One of the most remarkable books of the 20th century – and required reading for anybody who wants to make something of their lives – is Napoleon Hill's seminal work Think and Grow Rich.

Published in 1937, at the tail end of the great depression, it was the result of 25 years research – interviewing hundreds of millionaires to determine which specific, practical steps led to their wealth and prosperity.

The truly astonishing thing about reading this book in 2011 is just how applicable almost everything within the pages remains.

I always consider the line "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" to be a tired old trope – but in this case, it proves the line's validity.

If Napoleon Hill were alive today, he might be bemused by our smartphones, our GPS and our Twitter – but just about everything else in our society he would recognize as an unflattering profile from his own time; and he'd be unimpressed at our lack of progress.

Take Chapter 7, in which Hill debates the meaning of leadership. He writes, from the filter of his 1937 perspective, that "your attention is called to a few of the fertile fields in which there has been a decline of leadership, and in which the new type of leader may find an abundance of opportunity." He expected that void of leadership to be filled. It hasn't been.

"In the field of politics there is a most insistent demand for new leaders; a demand which indicates nothing less than an emergency. The majority of politicians have, seemingly, become high-grade, legalized racketeers. They have increased taxes and debauched the machinery of industry and business until the people can no longer stand the burden."

Good LORD. Is that not equally applicable to our crisis today? One which has spurred movements like the Tea Party, and our national dissatisfaction with the partisan politics and pork barrel farming of Washington?

"The banking business is undergoing a reform. The leaders in this field have almost entirely lost the confidence of the public. Already the bankers have sensed the need of reform, and they have begun it."

Hill wrote those words in 1937 – yet they are as applicable today as they have ever been. Occupy Wall Street is today picketing in the streets because of a lack of leadership Hill recognized seven decades ago.

"New leaders will be required in the field of Journalism. Newspapers of the future, to be conducted successfully, must be divorced from “special privilege” and cease to be organs of propaganda for the interests which patronize their advertising columns. The type of newspaper which publishes scandal and lewd pictures will eventually go the way of all forces which debauch the human mind."

Although Hill's puritanical streak reveals itself in his statement, what he identifies remains a problem today – as the phone hacking scandal in the British press reveals.

The silver lining of comparing Napoleon Hill's opinions of then with our situation now is that is suggests the areas of leadership and opportunity of which he spoke remain open; waiting for the right people to fill them. Perhaps those of us who are trying to "think and grow rich" would be wise to consider how best they could take advantage of those opportunities…