Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill: Review, Origins and Criticism

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis
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Did Napoleon Hill ever sit down with Andrew Carnegie? Everything in Think and Grow Rich leans on the answer. Hill said that in 1908 Carnegie handed him an assignment: study the richest men in America and reduce what they knew to a philosophy ordinary people could follow. The book that came out of it reached print in 1937 and has stayed there. The assignment has been far harder to find.

The advice itself is plainer than the legend. Write down what you want. Set a date. Make a plan and begin before you feel ready. Gather people who will push it forward. Don’t quit when it goes badly. Almost none of that is controversial, and most of it is sensible. The trouble is the packaging, and the man who sold it.

Who Hill was and how the book came together

Oliver Napoleon Hill was born on October 26, 1883, in a one-room cabin near Pound, Virginia, and died on November 8, 1970, in Greenville, South Carolina, according to Wikipedia’s biography. He began writing for local newspapers at thirteen, then spent his working life moving between publishing, lecturing and selling instruction in success. His eight-volume course The Law of Success came out in 1928 and supplied the groundwork for the later book.

Think and Grow Rich followed in 1937 from the Ralston Society, in the middle of the Depression (Wikipedia). Hill’s wife at the time, Rosa Lee Beeland, is credited with a large share of the work. Gizmodo reports that even Hill’s official biographers describe her as a tireless collaborator who typed and organized the draft and helped produce at least three rewrites. The couple divorced in 1940, and she kept the royalties.

In the 1950s Hill worked with the businessman W. Clement Stone, and the two co-wrote Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude around 1960. The 1937 book speaks a different language: desire, faith, autosuggestion. The Napoleon Hill Foundation, which Hill founded in 1963, holds his archive and keeps his books in print; its executive director, Michael J. Ritt Jr., co-wrote the authorized biography, A Lifetime of Riches (Dutton, 1995) (Wikipedia; Kirkus).

The Carnegie story and what the record shows

Hill dated the encounter to 1908. By the accounts of Gizmodo and Wikipedia, he did not describe it publicly until after Carnegie died in 1919, which left the other party unable to confirm or deny anything. In Hill’s telling, Carnegie went on to introduce him to Henry Ford and other titans, and Hill spent some twenty years collecting what they knew.

Carnegie’s biographer, David Nasaw, went looking for the connection. He told Gizmodo’s Matt Novak what he found:

“…found no evidence of any sort that Carnegie and Hill ever met.”

David Nasaw, quoted in Gizmodo

Other pieces of the biography fail the same test. Gizmodo found nothing to support Hill’s claim to have advised Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt, or to have coined Roosevelt’s line about having nothing to fear but fear itself. The one documented meeting with a famous name, a photograph with Thomas Edison, was a publicity event. Even the headcount drifts: the 1928 course credits forty-five people Hill said he studied, while a 2026 profile repeats a claim of one hundred millionaires (Wikipedia; All That’s Interesting).

The papers that might settle it sit in the Foundation’s private archive, and Novak says he was refused access. Wikipedia’s account adds that Hill’s authorized biography blames a Chicago storage fire for the missing paper trail, an explanation it does not verify.

Hill’s own record complicates the picture. Newspaper and regulatory reports summarized by Wikipedia describe ventures that ended badly: a lumber business in Alabama that produced fraud complaints around 1908, schools that drew fraud accusations, Illinois arrest warrants in 1918, and a Federal Trade Commission charge over advertising in his magazine in 1919. Gizmodo notes that he was acquitted on at least one set of check-altering arrests. These are allegations and charges, not a verdict on every page of the book.

None of it proves the advice is wrong. A fraud can say true things, and a good idea doesn’t need a clean résumé. What it does mean is that the book’s main selling point, firsthand secrets of the very rich, rests on Hill’s word alone.

1930s-style writing desk with a manual typewriter, marked-up manuscript pages, fountain pen and banker's lamp

The thirteen steps in plain terms

The book organizes its advice into thirteen steps: desire, faith, autosuggestion, specialized knowledge, imagination, organized planning, decision, persistence, the power of the Master Mind, the mystery of sex transmutation, the subconscious mind, the brain and the sixth sense (Wikipedia). Two chapters sit outside that count, one on the idea that thoughts are things and one on the six ghosts of fear.

The first eight steps read as a working method. Want something specifically enough to write it down. Believe it can be done, and rehearse the belief through repetition. Gather knowledge organized around the goal rather than knowledge in general. Turn the wish into a written plan that can be revised, decide quickly, change course slowly, and keep going through setbacks (as summarized in Graham Mann’s book notes).

The ninth step, the Master Mind, has had the longest afterlife. It describes a group of people working toward a shared aim in a spirit of harmony, and Hill rated it the most important principle for anyone aiming high. Michael Schein, writing in Inc., credits Hill with shaping the mastermind-group idea that still circulates in business.

The last four steps change register. The subconscious mind, the brain and the sixth sense lean on Hill’s metaphysics, and the chapter on sex transmutation is the one most likely to send a modern reader back to the table of contents. Wikipedia’s account of Hill says he described a circle of “invisible counselors” as real to him while admitting they existed only in his imagination.

The chapter on fear is more down to earth. It names six fears: poverty, criticism, ill health, the loss of love, old age and death (Nightingale-Conant). The preoccupation suits a book written with the Depression still on. Hill’s claim to have inspired Roosevelt’s own line about fear is a separate matter, and one Gizmodo could not support.

The line everyone quotes

The sentence most often pinned on the book is the “conceive and believe” maxim, usually given as whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Quote Investigator, which traces the origins of popular sayings, found no instance of that exact wording in Hill’s text. The earliest pairing of the two verbs it located is in the 1937 book’s passage on Thomas Edison. The closest full version is a 1958 newspaper report of a Hill speech, and related mottos reach back to 1906. In the Edison passage, Hill says Edison knew the mind could produce:

“ANYTHING THE MIND COULD CONCEIVE AND BELIEVE”

Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (1937), as cited by Quote Investigator

The correction is small. It still says something: the best-known sentence attached to the book is a later compression of a line about Edison, polished by the people who passed it along. Self-help classics get sanded down this way all the time. With this one, the legend keeps outrunning the text.

Where the book falls short

Think and Grow Rich argues from examples, and the examples are mostly Hill’s to vouch for. There is no way to separate the habits of people who got rich from the habits of people who tried the same things and didn’t, so the book can’t say which of its thirteen steps did any work. Persistence is the clean example: everyone who succeeded persisted, and so did plenty who failed.

Critics have said as much about the packaging. Eli Bendersky, reviewing it on his own site in 2004, found that the title promises a path to wealth the book doesn’t deliver. Schein argued in Inc. in 2017 that the book made Hill’s name and fortune rather than the reverse, with authorship itself doing the persuading. And in 1995 Kirkus Reviews, assessing the authorized biography the Foundation’s director had a hand in, delivered this verdict:

“A puff piece for fans, on the brink of parody.”

Kirkus Reviews, on A Lifetime of Riches

The same review noted that Hill claimed to be an attorney though he was not, and exaggerated his net worth.

Defenders make a different case. Jeffrey Gitomer, writing in BizTimes in 2014, called the lessons ahead of their era and worth rereading, while granting that the central idea did not start with Hill and runs back through writers such as Samuel Smiles, Orison Swett Marden and Dale Carnegie. Whether that reads as a defense or a footnote on originality depends on the reader.

Quiet archive room with a half-open wooden filing drawer, letters and a magnifying glass

What holds up

Strip away the biography and a usable core remains. Write the goal down. Put a date on it. Learn the specific things it requires. Treat the first plan as a draft. Find a small group that holds you to the work. Some readers take it exactly that way: a reviewer named Scott, on his book review blog, rated it four out of five, found the opening slow and the rest worth the wait.

None of that requires Carnegie, or the interviews, or the invisible counselors.

What the book set off

The strangest chapter of its afterlife happened on Long Island. Gizmodo recounts that in 1939 James B. Schafer’s Royal Fraternity of the Master Metaphysicians, based at Peace Haven, drew national attention with a plan to raise a five-month-old girl to be immortal on a vegetarian diet and nothing but positive thoughts. The group treated Think and Grow Rich as an important text, Hill was named the child’s godfather, and a 1940 New Yorker piece by E. J. Kahn Jr. described the group’s activities, including photographs of the baby holding a copy of the book (Gizmodo).

The influence runs through softer channels too. Wikipedia’s summary of Hill’s reach says Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret is seen as inspired by his work. On screen, the Napoleon Hill Foundation announced a docudrama, THINK: The Legacy of Think and Grow Rich, in 2016, mixing interviews with entrepreneurs and dramatized scenes from the book (Napoleon Hill Foundation); its release status could not be confirmed from that announcement. And the coverage hasn’t let up: Gizmodo’s 2016 investigation, Inc.’s 2017 column and an All That’s Interesting profile updated in February 2026 all circle back to the Carnegie question.

Video: the book in seven minutes

Book Champ’s animated summary, titled “Explained in 7 minutes,” gives a quick orientation to the book’s ideas. A summary inherits the book’s problems, including the Carnegie story above.

Open leather notebook with a handwritten goals list beside a pencil, wristwatch and coffee cup at golden hour

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Napoleon Hill actually meet Andrew Carnegie?
Nothing independent supports it. Carnegie’s biographer found no evidence the two met, and Hill did not describe the meeting until after Carnegie’s death in 1919.

Is the edition linked on this page the original 1937 text?
No. It is the 2005 Tarcher paperback, revised and updated by Arthur R. Pell, which the publisher says refreshes dated terms and examples and adds stories about later wealth-builders. It runs 320 pages (Penguin Random House). Editions sold as the original 1937 text are a separate purchase.

How many copies has it sold?
Every figure is a claim. Hill’s biographers say 20 million over fifty years, a recent profile says more than 15 million, and Wikipedia notes the larger number has been questioned. No independent audit turned up.

What is the Master Mind principle?
A group working toward a shared aim in a spirit of harmony, on the premise that nobody reaches a large goal alone.

Is it worth reading?
As a short, readable and sometimes odd set of habits for pursuing a goal, yes, with the history held at arm’s length. As an account of how rich men actually got rich, no.

Where to Read It

Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century is Arthur R. Pell’s 2005 revision of Hill’s text, with modern anecdotes added and dated language refreshed, so readers who want the period wording should look for editions sold as the original 1937 text. (affiliate link)

Further Reading

Sources

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