Born in a one-room cabin in Virginia, Napoleon Hill (1883-1970), was an American author who came upon his life’s purpose in 1908, when he met one of the most celebrated industrialist-philanthropists of the time, Andrew Carnegie, as part of a project to write about the lives of a series of financially successful, powerful men. Hill learnt that Carnegie believed in a kind of secret formula for success in the world, a simple set of rules which would do the trick for whoever could master them. Spotting the spark in Hill, Carnegie asked him if he could systematically analyse the lives of over five hundred noted personalities who seemed to have applied this very magic recipe for success for others to benefit from it. This led to the multivolume collection The Law of Success in 16 Lessons and also became the primary impetus behind Hill’s writing, Think and Grow Rich (1937), an all-time bestseller in the genre of personal success literature. Hill's “Philosophy of Achievement” became a formula for successful living; he considered capitalism, democracy, freedom and harmony as its foundations.