Napoleon Hill’s Magic Ladder to Success was originally written by Hill as a series of lectures to explain the seventeen principles of success that were the basis of his bestselling masterwork, Law of Success. Then in 1930, two years after the publication of Law of Success, as the devastating effects of the Great Depression were spreading throughout the country, Hill felt obliged to find a way to make his message of hope available so that even the average person could afford a copy. He started with the edited version of Law of Success that he had prepared for the lecture series, cut it down to the basic concepts, then rewrote the material in book form. The result was a condensed and tightly focused version of his philosophy of personal achievement designed to reach and influence the widest possible audience.

This new and revised edition of Napoleon Hill’s Magic Ladder to Success presents excerpts from Hill’s original text combined with updated information and new examples. Each chapter opens with a clear summary of the basic concept underlying one of Hill’s principles of success, followed by a mixture of excerpts from the original book interspersed with modern commentary that expands upon the central idea. For readers who are familiar with Hill’s seventeen principles of success, these chapters will provide a quick overview of the key points of each principle. For those readers who are new to the material, these chapters should be the stimulus to investigate the meticulously detailed explanations Hill wrote in Law of Success.

The final chapter of this book is entitled Forty Unique Ideas for Making Money and it is made up of the ideas that came out of a Master Mind brainstorming session between Napoleon Hill and one of his students. Hill included the chapter in the original edition to demonstrate how a Master Mind alliance could generate creative ideas in a short period of time. In this edition it serves as proof of how well Hill’s seventeen principles work when put into practice. Although Hill and his student were just interested in coming up with ideas, as you will see, most of the ideas that came out of that session were picked up by other people and turned into successful businesses, and in some cases launched whole industries.