Napoleon Hill was an American author who was one of the earliest producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature. His most famous work, Think and Grow Rich, is one of the best-selling books of all time. Hill’s works examined the power of personal beliefs, and the role they play in personal success. He became the adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933-36. “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve” is one of Hill’s hallmark expressions. How achievement actually occurs, and a formula for it that puts success in reach for the average person, were the focal points of Hill’s books.

The turning point in the writing career of Napoleon Hill is considered to have occurred in 1908 with his assignment, as part of a series of articles about famous men, to interview the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, one of the most powerful men in the world. Hill discovered that Carnegie believed that the process of success could be elaborated in a simple formula that could be duplicated by the average person. Impressed with Hill, Carnegie asked him if he was up to the task of putting together this information with only reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses to interview or analyze over 500 successful men and women, many of them millionaires, in order to discover and publish this formula for success.