Think and Grow Rich is Perfect Title
A little dated but his kind of information is timeless. Positive thinking to the max. Wonderful, simple book that sets forth basic principles for living a prosperous, healthly life.
The Classic they all copy
This is the original classic personal-growth and wealth-building book that all the self-help "Guru"s have been copying and imitating. Buy this and learn from the original. Buy this and learn the classic techniques the new-age thinking was built on, and that the "New-Wage" hucksters imitate without crediting it.
The single way of life in a capitalist society
After finishing "Think and Grow Rich" I have suddenly realized that this simple slogan is the single way of life in a capitalist society. In this book, as the only way of getting rich, the author advocates goal-directed way of life, purposefulness, constant self-perfection, courage, the skill to think and to act, and the other similar traits of character.
Many people came to a conclusion that the wealth, in some extent, depends on a level of education, motivation, self-esteem, and so on. The problem is that not all the people in equal extend incline to the education, to their self-improvement. This is because of the differences of their needs, habits, abilities, capabilities, and so on. Leo Tolstoy in his novel "Resurrection" arose a question of how to improve the level of education within a society: from inside of each individual or from outside? Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Should first the level of education of each and every individual be risen which yields a revolution (dialectic transition of quantity into quality) or the revolution should make the environment to foster the education of every individual?
The traits advocated by Napoleon Hill correspond to the first Leo Tolstoy's way of improving society. If each and every individual will improve, the society will automatically improve. The second way of Leo Tolstoy (create the environment which will foster the education of every individual) is contrary to Napoleon Hill's ideas: "if something is got for free or without big effort, it won't be appreciated, won't be handled with care or you won't trust it". Free education and medical care won't be respected properly by people, regardless how good this education and medical care are. That's why the socialist society will develop slower than capitalist. Marxists knew this and have built the concept of World revolution (to overthrow of capitalism in all countries), and a further idea by Trotsky that it was impossible to build socialism in a single country. Trotsky wrote that the socialist economy is not as efficient as capitalist and without the World revolution the USSR won't be able to overcome its economic underperformance.
Napoleon Hill praises the freedom and opportunities of the capitalist society of the U.S. in particular, which gives, according to Napoleon Hill, boundless opportunities for an individual who is able to think and grow rich.
I also recommend "The Road to Serfdom" by F. A. Hayek in addition to this book. Although "Think and Grow Rich" is a classical self-help book for a general reader while "The Road to Serfdom" is mostly academic, I think that both of them should be read.
