拿破仑·希尔

奥利弗·拿破仑·希尔（英语：Oliver Napoleon Hill，1883年10月26日—1970年11月8日）是一位美国作家。

生平

1883年出生于美国的一个贫穷家庭，他一边上大学，一边为一家杂志社工作。20岁时，他采访了著名的钢铁大王安德鲁·卡内基三天，结束时，安德鲁说，如果委托年轻的希尔一项他自己想完成，却已力不从心的任务——访问，研究众多成功人士，总结他们的成功经验和规律，给他人及后人以精神指导，希尔愿不愿意接受。这会耗尽希尔一生的精力，而钢铁大王表明不会给他一分钱资助，只是介绍关系。希尔在半分钟内就表示接受，而且坚定说他会有始有终。其后，希尔采访了500多位成功人士，包括发明家爱廸生、电话专利者贝尔、汽车大王亨利·福特、威尔逊总统、罗斯福总统等殿堂人物。在研究和思考他们的成功经验基础上，再凭着个人的毅力，他找到了成功人士的人生真谛，写下脍炙人口的成功法则，使他成为最著名的励志导师。

1970年11月8日逝世，享年87岁。

Oliver Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970) was an American self-help author and con man who 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 are promoted as expounding principles to achieve "success".

Hill is a controversial figure. Having had a history of criminal charges and fraud accusations, historians also doubt many of his claims, such as that he met Andrew Carnegie and that he was an attorney.

Life and career

Childhood

Hill was born in a one-room cabin near the Appalachian town of Pound in southwest Virginia. His parents were James Monroe Hill and Sarah Sylvania (Blair), and he was the grandson of James Madison Hill and Elizabeth (Jones). His grandfather came to the United States from England and settled in southwestern Virginia in 1847. His father was a dentist, at first unofficially and then with a license.

Hill's mother died when he was nine years old, and his father remarried two years later to Martha. According to Landers and Ritt, his stepmother was a good influence for him: "Hill's stepmother, the widow of a school principal, civilized the wild-child, Napoleon, making him go to school and attend church." At the age of 13, Hill began writing as a "mountain reporter", initially for his father's newspaper. At the age of fifteen, he married a local girl who had accused him of fathering her child; the girl later recanted the claim, and the marriage was annulled.

Early career

At the age of seventeen, Hill graduated from high school and moved to Tazewell, Virginia, to attend business school. In 1901, Hill accepted a job working for the lawyer Rufus A. Ayers, a coal magnate and former Virginia attorney general. Author Richard Lingeman wrote that Hill received this job after arranging to keep confidential the death of a black bellhop whom the previous manager of the mine had accidentally shot while drunk.

Hill left his coal mine management job soon afterward and enrolled in law school before withdrawing owing to a lack of funds. Later in life, Hill would use the title of "Attorney of Law", although Hill's official biography notes that "there is no record of his having actually performed legal services for anyone."

In 1903, Hill married for the second time to Edith Whitman; in 1905 their child Edith Whitman Hill was born. Their marriage was a fraught one due to Hill's alleged abuse of his wife and daughter in addition to his infidelity.

Failed business ventures and charges of fraud

Hill relocated to Mobile, Alabama, in 1907 and co-founded the Acree-Hill Lumber Company. In October 1908, the Pensacola Journal reported that the company was facing bankruptcy proceedings and charges of mail fraud for purchasing lumber on credit from outside Mobile, from other counties in Alabama and Florida, and selling it below cost, and failing to pay back the loan.

His wife Edith filed for divorce in 1908; at the proceedings Hill's friends and business partners testified to his affairs with prostitutes. It is sometime in 1908 that Hill claims his pivotal conversation with Andrew Carnegie happened; however, the existence of such a meeting is a point of contention amongst Hill biographers.