Contents synopsis:
In 1908, a young reporter named Napoleon Hill got an interview with recently retired steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie had just sold his mills to a trust that would become US Steel. He was busy spending the last half of his life giving away the fortune he had accumulated during the first half. He was the richest man in the world and the most successful.
Carnegie turned the original hour-long interview into a couple of days where he read to Hill about the principles of success he had learned and applied in business to be so successful. He liked what he saw in Hill and tasked him, if he accepted, with the task of interviewing most of the successful men of the day and writing a science of success, based first on Carnegie’s thoughts and then on what he would learn from it. men of industry. Carnegie would not pay Hill anything, but he would write cover letters that would allow him to learn the wisdom of success from almost all successful men during the first quarter of the 20th century.
In this book, Hill tries to relate the wisdom that Carnegie gave him. While there is no reason to doubt that many of the gems in the book may have come from Carnegie, among others, there are good reasons to doubt that it all did. First because it is written in Hill’s verbal and rhetorical style, including the quotes he attributes to Carnegie, and second because it makes a generous reference to events that occurred long after Carnegie’s death. Plus, he adds things like the supremacy of a positive mental attitude that came not from Carnegie but from Hill’s later collaborator W. Clement Stone. In fact, this book was originally written under the title Think Your Way to Wealth and in 1953 it was published as How to Raise Your Salary. It was later republished as The Wisdom of Andrew Carnegie, Told to Napoleon Hill.
The basic content of the final version is the 17 principles of success that Hill first wrote in his Science of Success series and that he repeated in various formulations in later works.
However, like everything about Hill, there is a lot of useful material here. The reader may want to omit some parts that may not seem helpful, but most of it is among Hill’s best writing. The principles and disciplines of success that he writes about are at the root of much of the success literature of the past 50 years and many of the speakers, leaders, and authors in the field of success and self-improvement have been deeply influenced by this work.
Readability / Writing quality:
This book is very readable. Like much of Hill’s work, it is easy to do and well organized. Unlike some of his early work, it is concise. Beginning with Think and Grow, Rich Hill had learned to write economically, a method much more accessible to the average reader.
Notes on the author:
Napoleon Hill dedicated his life to fulfilling the challenge he claimed Andrew Carnegie had given him. I have not yet discovered any independent record of this. I checked with Carnegie’s most recent biographer and found no reference in any of the Carnegie articles or other biographies on him regarding this conversation or knowledge of Hill. However, Hill spent his entire life insisting on his truth and no one from the Carnegie family that I know of ever challenged it.
In the 1930s, after many disappointments and failures, Hill gained national fame as a best-selling author with Think and Grow Rich, based largely on and inspired by his studies with Carnegie.
Three great ideas you can use:
1. Before Hill met W. Clement Stone and agreed with him that a positive mental attitude was the most important quality for success, Hill insisted that Carnegie and the man of other successful men whom he had interviewed and From whom they had learned they had discovered that having a definite main purpose in life and concentrating all energy on it was the first key to success. It may not matter if you agree with Carnegie that this is the most important requirement for success or if you agree with Stone that a positive mental attitude is the most important: both attributes are vital for success in all areas of the life.
2. The use of the mastermind principle is the second great lesson taught by Carnegie. Carnegie and Hill learned early in life that no one achieves great success alone. Bringing together a group of like-minded people who will work together in harmony for a common goal is the most powerful force in human endeavor and the key to success.
3. The exercise of self-discipline is also a necessary and fundamental requirement for success. Those who have mastered this skill are successful; those who have not, most of the time fail to do so.
Publication information:
The Wisdom of Andrew Carnegie Told to Napoleon Hill, by Napoleon Hill.
© 1953, 1981 and revised 2004. Published by the Napoleon Hill Foundation, Wise, Virginia.
Overall rating for this book: Very good.