The Law of Success

Self-help

First published: 1928
Print length: 592 pagesDover Publications, 2011

Description

Originally published as fifteen booklets, The Law of Success presents Napoleon Hill’s attempt to identify teachable habits behind achievement. Drawing on his study of prominent business leaders and what he describes as decades of testing, Hill organizes success around qualities such as cooperation, self-confidence, initiative, imagination, self-control, and accurate thinking. His metaphorical “Temple of Success” treats these lessons as interdependent parts of a larger discipline rather than isolated tricks. Organized thought provides the framework: readers are asked to direct attention, coordinate effort, and turn intention into sustained action. The course offers both a historical example of early personal-development writing and a systematic account of how ambition, character, planning, and relationships were understood within its business-minded philosophy.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Dense · Direct · Essayistic

Pace

Measured

Tone

Earnest · Philosophical · Uplifting

Structure

Argumentative · Reference

Focus

Ideas · Information

Emotional intensity

2 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 3 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

AmbitionCommunityTransformationWealthWork

About Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill was an American self-help writer who treated achievement as a method that could be learned, rehearsed, and applied. Influenced by New Thought, he joined mental discipline to an entrepreneurial vocabulary of goals, planning, specialized knowledge, cooperation, and persistence. His books usually proceed by classification. They divide success into named principles, illustrate them with prominent business figures, and return readers to exercises or repeated habits. Think and Grow Rich condenses this approach into fourteen principles, moving briskly from desire and precise aims to organized action and the “Master Mind” alliance. The Law of Success expands the same material into a denser course, using the “Temple of Success” to present its lessons as interdependent parts. Hill could also dramatize instruction through dialogue. Outwitting the Devil stages an interrogation of a personified adversary, making fear, indecision, and self-command into competing voices. Hill said his system grew from a challenge by Andrew Carnegie and interviews with successful people, though the Carnegie connection and many of Hill’s broader claims have been widely disputed.

Books by Napoleon Hill

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Dover Publications
Language: English
ISBN: 9780486486079

Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.

Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.