{
  "id": "think-and-grow-rich",
  "shelfNumber": "16",
  "title": "Think and Grow Rich",
  "subtitle": "",
  "authors": [
    "Napoleon Hill"
  ],
  "firstPublished": "1937",
  "firstPublicationNote": "First published in 1937. Penguin’s Classic Edition page explicitly identifies the original 1937 publication. The Foundation also places the book in 1937.",
  "kind": "Historical motivational nonfiction",
  "themes": [
    "practice",
    "power"
  ],
  "theme": "oxblood",
  "layout": "gate",
  "tagline": "An ambition, written down.",
  "dek": "Hill’s 1937 book turns desire, persistence and organized effort into a program of personal achievement. Practical suggestions about planning sit beside claims about faith, autosuggestion and the powers of the mind. Read the confidence of its voice closely, and keep a separate place for questions about its evidence.",
  "art": {
    "src": "/images/bookshelf-goodreads/think-and-grow-rich.webp",
    "alt": "Ochre folded paper shapes and fine seed-bearing branches spread across textured ivory paper.",
    "width": 1536,
    "height": 1024,
    "caption": "Original AI-generated atmosphere for PointCast. Not a book cover, archival image or historical document."
  },
  "context": {
    "heading": "Desire meets a plan.",
    "paragraphs": [
      "Hill’s 1937 book turns desire, persistence and organized effort into a program of personal achievement. Practical suggestions about planning sit beside claims about faith, autosuggestion and the powers of the mind. Read the confidence of its voice closely, and keep a separate place for questions about its evidence.",
      "Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) wrote motivational books and lectured on success. Think and Grow Rich appeared in 1937, after his longer Law of Success course. The book presents a philosophy of achievement through anecdotes and emphatic instructions. Its historical influence does not establish that its proposed mental mechanisms work.",
      "Treat the wealth claims and metaphysical mechanisms as Hill’s assertions, not verified science or financial guidance. Anecdotes about successful people do not guarantee results for another reader. Avoid presenting poverty, illness or other circumstances as proof of defective thinking."
    ],
    "sourceIds": [
      "think-and-grow-rich-source-1",
      "think-and-grow-rich-source-2"
    ]
  },
  "authorNote": {
    "text": "Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) wrote and lectured on personal achievement. The selected cards distinguish the full historical 1937 wording from Arthur R. Pell’s 2005 update. Anecdotes and confident instructions are part of the book’s rhetoric, not a guarantee of results.",
    "sourceIds": [
      "think-and-grow-rich-source-1",
      "think-and-grow-rich-source-2"
    ]
  },
  "entryPoints": [
    {
      "id": "instruction",
      "label": "Instructions",
      "title": "Notice the kind of statement.",
      "prompt": "Mark a practical instruction, a historical anecdote and a claim about unseen mental forces in different ways."
    },
    {
      "id": "evidence",
      "label": "Evidence",
      "title": "Ask what would support a mechanism.",
      "prompt": "When a passage explains an outcome through faith or autosuggestion, what evidence would establish that explanation?"
    },
    {
      "id": "revision",
      "label": "Revision",
      "title": "Compare the wording.",
      "prompt": "Place one chapter beside Pell’s update. Which changes clarify an older term, and which change the argument’s historical voice?"
    }
  ],
  "pathways": [
    {
      "label": "Read the historical voice",
      "title": "Read the historical voice.",
      "text": "Begin with the original 1937 wording. Mark a practical instruction, a historical anecdote and a claim about unseen mental forces in different ways."
    },
    {
      "label": "Compare an update",
      "title": "Compare an update.",
      "text": "Read one chapter beside Pell’s revised version. Ask which changes clarify the language and which reshape the argument."
    },
    {
      "label": "Follow the longer course",
      "title": "Follow the longer course.",
      "text": "Turn to the full Law of Success to see how an earlier, extended lesson sequence differs from this shorter program."
    }
  ],
  "editions": [
    {
      "id": "hill-think-original-1937",
      "label": "Think and Grow Rich: The Classic Edition",
      "format": "Mass Market Paperback",
      "publisher": "Tarcher / Penguin Random House",
      "isbn": "9780143110163",
      "publicationDate": "2016-07-05",
      "pages": 416,
      "extras": "Publisher explicitly reproduces the full original 1937 text. This is a 2016 reprint, not a 1937 first printing. Full 1937 text, according to the publisher; 416-page mass market paperback. A new introduction or named editor has not been established for this ISBN.",
      "why": "Choose this to encounter the book’s historical wording before comparing modern updates.",
      "sourceId": "think-and-grow-rich-source-1",
      "links": [
        {
          "kind": "new",
          "label": "View publisher / new edition",
          "url": "https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/536983/think-and-grow-rich-the-classic-edition-by-napoleon-hill/9780143110163/",
          "note": "Selected mass market paperback ISBN 9780143110163. Check the external provider’s current terms."
        },
        {
          "kind": "used",
          "label": "Browse used copies of this ISBN",
          "url": "https://www.abebooks.com/products/isbn/9780143110163/19641948659",
          "note": "Exact ISBN discovery. Compare condition, binding, edition and delivery terms with the individual seller."
        },
        {
          "kind": "borrow",
          "label": "Find the Classic Edition through your library",
          "url": "https://www.overdrive.com/media/2462350/think-and-grow-rich",
          "note": "Title-level discovery of the Penguin digital edition. The provider displays a print ISBN; confirm the licensed format with your own library. No selected print holding is implied."
        }
      ],
      "translator": "Not applicable — English original"
    },
    {
      "id": "hill-think-pell-updated",
      "label": "Think and Grow Rich — revised and updated for the 21st century",
      "format": "Paperback",
      "publisher": "Tarcher / Penguin Random House",
      "isbn": "9781585424337",
      "publicationDate": "2005-08-18",
      "pages": 320,
      "extras": "Modern revision and update. Contemporary examples and explanations are interwoven into the text; do not label this the unchanged 1937 text. Revised and updated by Arthur R. Pell; Modern examples and clarification of older terms; 320-page paperback.",
      "why": "Choose this for contemporary examples, while keeping the 1937 text nearby to see what an update changes.",
      "sourceId": "think-and-grow-rich-source-2",
      "links": [
        {
          "kind": "new",
          "label": "View publisher / new edition",
          "url": "https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297065/think-and-grow-rich-by-napoleon-hill/9781585424337/",
          "note": "Selected paperback ISBN 9781585424337. Check the external provider’s current terms."
        },
        {
          "kind": "used",
          "label": "Browse used copies of this ISBN",
          "url": "https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/isbn/9781585424337/",
          "note": "Exact ISBN discovery. Compare condition, binding, edition and delivery terms with the individual seller."
        },
        {
          "kind": "borrow",
          "label": "Find your library in Libby",
          "url": "https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby",
          "note": "Search Think and Grow Rich and Napoleon Hill through your participating library. Local licences, borrowing eligibility and availability vary; this does not establish a holding of the selected print ISBN."
        }
      ],
      "translator": "Not applicable — English original"
    }
  ],
  "digitalRoutes": [
    {
      "id": "historical-text",
      "label": "Read a historical edition at the Internet Sacred Text Archive",
      "description": "The host’s historical 1938 Ralston Society text, separate from Pell’s modern update.",
      "url": "https://sacred-texts.com/nth/tgr/index.htm",
      "rights": "The host identifies this specific 1938 text as public domain in the United States because the copyright was not renewed. This is the host’s determination; check local law outside the US.",
      "sourceId": "route-9",
      "type": "historical-digital-text"
    }
  ],
  "rightsNote": "The host identifies this specific 1938 text as public domain in the United States because the copyright was not renewed. This is the host’s determination; check local law outside the US. A 1937 date does not itself make every edition free in the US in 2026. The status of this particular historical text does not license Pell’s 2005 revisions, modern introductions, contemporary covers or later additions.",
  "readerNote": "Treat the wealth claims and metaphysical mechanisms as Hill’s assertions, not verified science or financial guidance. Anecdotes about successful people do not guarantee results for another reader. Avoid presenting poverty, illness or other circumstances as proof of defective thinking.",
  "deeper": {
    "themes": [
      {
        "title": "Goals and general claims",
        "text": "What distinguishes a useful goal-setting exercise from a universal claim about how wealth arises?"
      },
      {
        "title": "Anecdotes as evidence",
        "text": "What evidence would support a claim about autosuggestion or a mental mechanism?"
      },
      {
        "title": "The work of an update",
        "text": "Which successes receive attention, and which failures or circumstances remain outside the book’s account?"
      }
    ],
    "questions": [
      "What evidence would support a claim about autosuggestion or a mental mechanism?",
      "Which successes receive attention, and which failures or circumstances remain outside the book’s account?",
      "How does modernization alter the book’s authority, tone and historical assumptions?"
    ]
  },
  "series": null,
  "related": [
    {
      "title": "The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons",
      "url": "/books/the-law-of-success/",
      "why": "Read the earlier, extended course beside the shorter program."
    },
    {
      "title": "The Science of Getting Rich",
      "url": "/books/the-science-of-getting-rich/",
      "why": "Compare two historical accounts of thought and prosperity."
    }
  ],
  "sources": [
    {
      "id": "think-and-grow-rich-source-1",
      "label": "Penguin Random House: original-text Classic Edition",
      "url": "https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/536983/think-and-grow-rich-the-classic-edition-by-napoleon-hill/9780143110163/",
      "type": "Primary publisher",
      "note": "Original publication year, original-text claim, precise selected edition metadata"
    },
    {
      "id": "think-and-grow-rich-source-2",
      "label": "Penguin Random House: revised edition",
      "url": "https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297065/think-and-grow-rich-by-napoleon-hill/9781585424337/",
      "type": "Primary publisher",
      "note": "Pell update, metadata, author dates"
    },
    {
      "id": "think-and-grow-rich-source-3",
      "label": "Wake County library catalogue",
      "url": "https://catalog.wake.gov/Record/426987",
      "type": "Primary public-library record",
      "note": "Selected revised edition ISBN, publisher, 2005 publication and bibliographic identifiers"
    },
    {
      "id": "think-and-grow-rich-source-4",
      "label": "Internet Sacred Text Archive: specific text and front matter",
      "url": "https://sacred-texts.com/book/think-and-grow-rich/shell/start-reading",
      "type": "Digital provider and historical primary text",
      "note": "Specific 1938 source printing, host’s US rights claim and linked renewal-search report"
    },
    {
      "id": "think-and-grow-rich-source-5",
      "label": "UPenn Online Books Page: Napoleon Hill",
      "url": "https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/who/Hill%2C%20Napoleon%2C%201883-1970",
      "type": "University-library directory",
      "note": "Independent catalogue listing of the 1938 Sacred Texts edition"
    },
    {
      "id": "think-and-grow-rich-source-6",
      "label": "Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain: 2026",
      "url": "https://cspd.law.duke.edu/publicdomainday/2026",
      "type": "University copyright research centre",
      "note": "US-only date-based expiration context; 1930 works enter US public domain in 2026. Later books need a separate basis."
    },
    {
      "id": "route-7",
      "label": "Find the Classic Edition through your library",
      "url": "https://www.overdrive.com/media/2462350/think-and-grow-rich",
      "type": "Library discovery route",
      "note": "Title-level discovery of the Penguin digital edition. The provider displays a print ISBN; confirm the licensed format with your own library. No selected print holding is implied."
    },
    {
      "id": "route-8",
      "label": "Find your library in Libby",
      "url": "https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby",
      "type": "Library discovery route",
      "note": "Search Think and Grow Rich and Napoleon Hill through your participating library. Local licences, borrowing eligibility and availability vary; this does not establish a holding of the selected print ISBN."
    },
    {
      "id": "route-9",
      "label": "Read a historical edition at the Internet Sacred Text Archive",
      "url": "https://sacred-texts.com/nth/tgr/index.htm",
      "type": "Digital provider",
      "note": "The host identifies its specific historical text as public domain in the United States because the 1937/1938 copyright was not renewed. UPenn’s Online Books Page independently catalogues this 1938 online edition."
    }
  ],
  "checkedAt": "2026-10-03",
  "canonical": "https://pointcast.xyz/books/think-and-grow-rich/",
  "artworkProvenance": "/images/bookshelf-goodreads/provenance.json",
  "commerce": "External discovery links. Providers determine availability, prices, condition, and library eligibility. No PointCast stock, checkout, payment, or fulfilment.",
  "reproducedBookText": false,
  "quotationsUsed": 0,
  "artworkIsOfficialCover": false
}