How to think and really grow rich
The pages of the biography are filled with tears and sorrow but finally triumph knocked on the door of Napoleon Hill.
BOOK REVIEW
(A Lifetime of Riches: The Biography of Napoleon Hill by Michael J Ritt Jr and Kirk Landers)
You may not have heard about Napoleon Hill but you will most certainly be touched or affected by some of the “laws of success” that he had laid down in his famous book “Think and Grow Rich”.
Perhaps your boss has read the book, or your dad or a good friend of yours. But for 74 years, that book has changed the lives of millions of people across the world.
One would think that Hill would have enjoyed a very successful career beginning from his early years. That is not true. This biography charts Hill’s life from Oct 26, 1883 to Nov 8, 1970.
He died at the age of 87, leaving behind a legacy that can never be erased.
For a man to be consumed by an overwhelming desire to succeed in life, he must first experience the bitter taste of defeat and failures. Hill had spades of that.
Poverty was the cradle from which he learnt to stand on his own two feet and endured the harsh realities in a country which had just seen the likes of General George Armstrong Custer who died in the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Hill was the first-born of Sara and James Hill who made their home in Wise County, Virginia. America was just emerging from the Wild, Wild West Years. Red Indian Chief Sitting Bull was no longer a threat.
In fact, the Indian chief had been exiled to a reservation around that time but Geronimo and some other Apache chiefs were still giving the authorities the runaround in the wild country.
Just before Hill was born, inventor Thomas Edison had just lit up North America. Andrew Carnegie was beginning to expand his steel empire.
In Wise County located in the backwaters near the Kentucky border, somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountain, little Oliver Napoleon was struggling to get used to poverty, illiteracy and ignorance.
Prophetic words
Napoleon’s mother died when he was nine years old. One year after Sara’s death, James Hill married the daughter of a school principal, Martha Ramey Banner.
After his biological mother’s death, Napoleon became a delinquent but his step-mother Martha soon straightened him out. One day, she pulled him aside and said: “People are wrong about you. You are not the worst boy in the county, only the most active. You just need to direct your energy towards accomplishing something worthwhile.”
When Napoleon was 12 years old, Martha bought him a typewriter in an effort to make him give up his real six-shooter. She said: “If you become as good as you are with that gun, you may become rich and famous and known throughout the world.”
Those prophetic words came to pass about 40 years later. And for the rest of his adult life, Napoleon would credit his stepmother with all his successes.
If you have read “Think and Grow Rich”, you will know that the catchphrase is “what the mind of man can conceive, it can achieve”.
One year after he received the typewriter, Napoleon found himself working down at the coal mine. Life was naturally hard when wages was just a dollar a day.
But this was a young man who was in hurry to catch up with success. He enrolled for a business college course and raced through it like a man possessed.
Soon he joined Rufus Ayres, one of the most powerful men in Virginia. Young Napoleon’s bulldog tenacity caught the attention of Ayres and before long, Napoleon was running his coal mine.
At 22, he became a partner of a lumberyard business. Then in 1908, America went into an economic tailspin. With the financial chaos, Napoleon’s fortunes were wiped out.
At 24 and standing on the threshold of a whole new world, Napoleon became a bankrupt. He then left for New York City. He had just turned 25.
Hand of Destiny
In New York, he found work as a reporter for Bob Taylor’s Magazine. One of his assignments was to interview the movers and shakers of society.
He soon got his chance. In 1908, Napoleon came face to face with 74-year-old Andrew Carnegie.
During the interview, the steel tycoon told him: “The richest heritage a young man can have is to be born into poverty.”
Then Carnegie, a young lad who migrated from Scotland, decades ago, expounded his philosophy of success: “The man who knows exactly what he wants, has a definite plan for getting it, and is actually actively engaged in carrying out that plan, has no difficulty in believing in his own ability to succeed.”
The old man then threw Napoleon a challenge. Carnegie asked him whether he had the courage and temerity to embark on a project which required him to interview some of the richest men in the country and study the lives of past great leaders as well.
The project would cover about 20 years of his life. The most startling announcement by Carnegie was that Napoleon would entirely be independent and there would be no financial support from the millionaire at all.
It was an enormously challenging proposal and yet at the same time quite frightening but Napoleon accepted it with “humility and excitement”.
In his later years, Napoleon would describe that moment as a time “when the Hand of Destiny reached out to me”.
This is one of the most fascinating biographies I have ever read about a famous man who wrote an inspirational book that fired the imagination of millions of people and helped create fulfilment in the lives of countless others.
Before one could say the rest is history, Napoleon still had a long journey ahead of him. As far as the story goes, it was just chapter three of A Lifetime of Riches.
Before Napoleon could have finally convinced Success to move into his house as a permanent lodger, he would have married three times. The third marriage turned out to be a charm for the man who would and could never give up.
It would be nice to read that it had been plain sailing from then on but that would be furthest from the truth. Napoleon’s life was like a yo-yo.
There were years when he prospered and then there were times when he had nothing but a little voice urging him to carry on.
In his struggling years in New York, he had to neglect his duties as a husband to his first wife and sons. He wasn’t a good provider and he was seldom around. Consequently, his wife bore the brunt of supporting herself and the boys.
The pages of the biography are filled with tears and sorrow but it wouldn’t be much a book and biography if triumph did not finally meet Napoleon at the front door.
The biography of Napoleon Hill is one of the few books that I had great difficulty in putting down. I started reading it in the morning and by the time, I finished, it was already evening.
It was such a great read that I felt a strong current of energy cruising through my veins days after I have finished reading the book.
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