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How to Be Rich (Tarcher Success Classics) by Napoleon Hill

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The accumulated wisdom of the most celebrated motivational writers of all time is distilled into one brief playbook for unlocking the prosperity-power of your mind. "Why Not You?" This is the guiding question of "How to Be Rich." To answer it, this compact book gleans must-read passages, powerful meditations, and tantalizing wealth-building techniques from the collected work of the greatest motivational writers ever. Each chapter in "How to Be Rich" is short enough to read in a grocery store checkout line-yet powerful enough to challenge years of ingrained, self-limiting thinking. How to Be Rich boils down the cumulative insight of leading self-help and positive-thinking guides into one surprisingly concise rule book for releasing your hidden potential. Chapters -"To Prosper, Let No One Control You" by Christian Larson -"What We Are Seeking Is Seeking The Mind as Magnet" by Julia Seton -"The Immense, Secret Power of Gratitude" by Wallace D. Wattles -"Why Doing More Work Than We're Paid for Leads to Wealth" by Napoleon Hill -"In Order to Get, We Must Give" by Ralph Waldo Trine -"The Power of Meditation" by James Allen -"Fourteen Steps to Success" by Joseph Murphy

Unknown Binding

First published August 7, 2010

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315 people want to read

About the author

Napoleon Hill

1,825 books5,383 followers
Oliver Napoleon Hill was an American self-help author and conman. He is best known for his book Think and Grow Rich (1937), which is among the best-selling self-help books of all time. Hill's works insisted that fervid expectations are essential to improving one's life. Most of his books were promoted as expounding principles to achieve "success".
Hill is a controversial figure. Accused of fraud, modern historians also doubt many of his claims, such as that he met Andrew Carnegie and that he was an attorney.

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5 stars
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37 (26%)
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29 (20%)
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18 (12%)
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
Profile Image for MuuLee.
187 reviews6 followers
November 26, 2018
It was an okay book, good for quick reading, contain some important points
Profile Image for Karin.
796 reviews43 followers
November 10, 2014
Having read many of the books this is based on, i didn't learn much new information. Some of the ideas in here are excellent: create wealth with ideas, not through stepping on other people, work productively etc. Other concepts are more like 'the Secret" and it hasn't worked for me...yet.

I'd say this is good for teens who are just getting their feet into the financial world.
1 review
December 7, 2020
The book How to be rich by Napoleon Hill, Joseph Murphy, Wallace D. Wattles, Robert Collier. This book talks a lot about millionaires thinking and different ideas or ways to think that will help you become rich, there are many different mindsets and principles that the book will take you through, each chapter being a different one.

The first principle is desire, you must have a desire for the money, which would then give you motivation. This motivation will then help you reach your goal. The more you want it, the harder you’ll try. The book then goes through 7 more principals that help change your perspective on being rich and helps you better understand the mind of the rich. After the 8 principles it talks more about theory’s and different abilities your mind can use to help you become rich.

The strengths about this book is that it isn’t to long, it is about 240 pages but it goes by quick. If you’re interested in money it goes by pretty quickly. Another strength that this book has is that it talks about well known people that are rich so you can understand it. I major weakness about this book is that it’s an older book, although is was republished and edited a little in 2015, I still think they could have done a better job of making it more modern and relatable to this time frame.

I think the book did an amazing job at descriptively describing each principle in well layer out paragraphs. It starts off with what the principe means and the moves into how to use it in your everyday lifestyle and then how it’ll effect you. Then it talks about stories of someone using this in there life and getting something positive out of it.
Profile Image for Ryan.
1,396 reviews199 followers
July 30, 2018
A bunch of (out of copyright) excerpts from 1800s/1900s guides to wealth and self actualization. A lot of the language is dated, as is the presentation, but many of the ideas are solid. Still, not a very good collection — taking a bunch of separately good things and throwing them together haphazardly so the whole is less than the sum of the parts. Skip.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Rebecca Petrilli.
112 reviews2 followers
March 2, 2025
Some good things in here but I can’t get past the idea that poverty is a choice
Profile Image for Karl.
Author 2 books16 followers
March 29, 2014
One of the key words in the title is “compact” because this book is essentially a compilation of many snippets of information/wisdom from some of the most recognized names in the personal development field: Napoleon Hill, Joseph Murphy, Robert Collier, Wallace D. Wattles, James Allen, Julia Seton, Ralph Waldo trine and more.

In and of itself, How to be Rich provides some worthwhile information for those seeking to enrich their lives; however, for those who are familiar with the aforementioned authors, the content will be familiar and likely not particularly useful. For those not overly familiar with the writings of the early “New Thought” authors, How to be Rich could provide a cursory summary to some of the more common books in the "New Thought/New Age" genre, thereby serving as a decent resource to direct the reader to more comprehensive material.

One of the key words in the title is “compact” because this book is essentially a compilation of many snippets of information/wisdom from some of the most recognized names in the personal development field: Napoleon Hill, Joseph Murphy, Robert Collier, Wallace D. Wattles, James Allen, Julia Seton, Ralph Waldo trine and more.

In and of itself, How to be Rich provides some worthwhile information for those seeking to enrich their lives; however, for those who are familiar with the aforementioned authors, the content will be familiar and likely not particularly useful. For those not overly familiar with the writings of the early “New Thought” authors, How to be Rich could provide a cursory summary to some of the more common books in the "New Thought/New Age" genre, thereby serving as a decent resource to direct the reader to more comprehensive material.

Regardless of whether or not the reader is familiar with the many authors who contributed to How to be Rich, I believe that it is important to remind the reader that “Rich” doesn’t exclusively apply to money. Indeed, the person reading this book with the sole purpose of discovering detailed techniques to accumulate vast sums of money will likely be very disappointed. The premise of this book, in my view, is that money is a by-product of “right living” and when we organize our inner world correctly, THEN we will have the outer abundance to go with it. As Theron Q. Dumont so poignantly stated, “Thought, not money, makes money.” Or, as Wallace D. Wattles says, “Poverty and wealth are the results of internal states of mind, and only as mind changes will material change. Environment is only a big mirror in which we see ourselves reflected.”

In their own way the other authors share a similar message and they also deal with topics such as: the real value of time, the importance of gratitude, the power of the subconscious mind, the destructive forces of fear and the key role that visualization plays in the manifestation of wealth. Overall, regardless of what particular aspect of wealth each author discusses, the consistent message is that our inner world, our thoughts, are the primary cause of our outer world and if we want to have a rich life we first need to have our inner world in order.

So, to sum up my views: for those who have yet to embark on the adventure of consciously re-organizing their inner world this book could serve as a very tentative first step. Readers familiar with the authors included in this book will likely prefer other titles written exclusively by one specific author.
Profile Image for Amanda Mitchell.
100 reviews2 followers
January 29, 2011
I used to read in auto pilot without thinking about the information presented. This book falls in with books similar to 'The Law of Attraction'. While your thoughts do lead to your actions... there isn't real evidence that they 'create'.

You can think about money all you want. It doesn't mean it'll show up at your door.
Profile Image for Lisa J Shultz.
Author 15 books92 followers
January 19, 2017
I carried this book around in my purse to read whenever I had to wait somewhere. It has very short chapters of a page or two, which made it nice to just pick up here and there to read. Comprised of a variety of famous motivational authors, it has a wonderful collection of wisdom.
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