Can a Book Change Your Life?

by Norman Monath

First I would like to tell you how I happened to read the first book that changed my life overnight. The title was How to Attract Good Luck and Make the Most of It in Your Daily Life. Even though the author, A.H.Z. Carr, was an adviser to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, I would ordinarily have scoffed at the idea of reading such a book. You would have had to pay me to read works such as The Magic of Believing, The Magic of Thinking Big, How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success, etc.

At that time their titles gave me the impression that they were banal bromides written for solely commercial purposes — books that had nothing new to say except what anybody with a little common sense already knew. However, How to Attract Good Luck was about to be published by Simon & Schuster, where I had a relatively menial job. My job at that time included chauffeuring Richard L. Simon, the cofounder, to and from the office.

Dick Simon was a very outgoing person who used to discuss his business matters with me while we were driving together. My secret wish was that someday I would impress him by coining up with a great idea to help solve one of his problems. As it turned out, he was having a problem finding the right advertising approach in launching How to Attract Good Luck, so I thought I'd read it and see if I might have a good suggestion.

Thank God I read it! By applying its principles immediately I began a collaboration with Walt Kelly on Songs of the Pogo, a best-selling book as well as a highly successful record album. In the fourth chapter I will outline the principles of How to Attract Good Luck for you and show you exactly how it led to the Walt Kelly collaboration. Before that I want to continue with the theme of this chapter: to convince you that books do change people's lives.

Some years ago, when I had already founded Cornerstone Library, I came across an interesting story in the newspapers. It was about Warren Grimes, a millionaire, who said he owed all of his success to the principles he learned from a book called Working with God by Gardner Hunting. Mr. Grimes said that up to the age of thirty-five he had accomplished very little in life. Then he happened to read this paragraph from Working with God:

You have heard it said a thousand times that "you can't get something for nothing." You may or may not think that you believe this to be true, but it is true, whether you believe it or not, and everybody deep down in his inner nature knows it is true. That's why he is shy of any promise that promises too much. That's why you are probably skeptical of this little piece of print. But just let this idea get a foothold in your mind: If it is a law that I cannot get something for nothing, then it must be true of this law, as it is of all genuine laws, that it works both ways; it must be true that I cannot give anything without getting something for it. Ever think of that?

Well, Warren Grimes hadn't thought of that up to that time but he never forgot it since! He started giving of himself every which way possible — his time, his energy, what little money he had — and it all started coming back to him in spades. Within three years he owned a company that manufactured equipment for airplanes and earned enough money to buy himself a private island off the coast of southeastern Florida.

I don't think I waited more than five minutes after reading the Warren Grimes story to track down a copy of Working with God. I then made an arrangement with the original publisher for me to bring out a paperback edition under the Cornerstone Library imprint. Incidentally, we did not have to pay the author any royalties for the rights because, guess what, he wanted to give them away free!

Shortly after publishing the paperback edition of Working with God, I noticed that the Reader's Digest did a series called "Try Giving Yourself Away," based on essentially the same principles that Gardner Hunting espoused. I don't mean to imply that the Reader's Digest series was imitative in anyway, and for all I know may have preceded Hunting's book. The point is that the underlying philosophy of giving, as opposed to taking, has high credibility.

The time-honored expression "It is better to give than to receive" often is said in jest, but its longevity is ample testimony to its substance. While the merits of giving have been espoused for years, especially in Sunday sermons, Working with God is the only book I know that offers a Newtonian "material law" as proof of the powerful effects of giving — namely, that every action of giving leads to an equal and opposite reaction of getting.

Recently, on the Larry King Show, Ted Turner was asked why he wanted to contribute a billion dollars for humanitarian purposes under the auspices of the United Nations. Among the reasons Ted Turner gave to Larry was the fact that Mr. Turner always believed that "it is better to give than to receive!"

Another book that changed people's lives, including my own, was The Magic of Believing by Claude Bristol. When I published the paperback edition of that book I had heard that Phyllis Diller attributed her success to its contents. I called her and asked if she would be willing to give us a quote for the front cover of our edition. This is what she wrote: "The Magic of Believing changed my life. Read it and any problem can be solved, happiness can be achieved, great rewards can be reaped."

Liberace, the great entertainer, was another reader of The Magic of Believing who attributed his success to having read the book. From time to time he would appear on talk shows Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, etc. — and he would acknowledge the fact that his life was changed by reading The Magic of Believing. Sales of the book would zoom as a result, and I wonder how many readers, because of Liberace and Phyllis Diller, have dramatic stories to tell!

I made it a point to publish (or reprint in paperback editions) as many as I could of the books that influenced me. In the course of publishing a book many people are involved in the preliminary process — the typesetter, the proofreader, the cover designer, et al., all of whom have to read either a part or all of the book. One of my greatest sources of satisfaction used to occur when one of those people would tell me how the particular book in question changed his or her life for the better. Many of the people who worked for me were inspired to attain new levels of achievement because it was their job to read what we used to call personal guides, or inspirational books. My dear friend Terry Garrity, later famous as "J," was motivated to write one of the greatest best-sellers of all time — The Sensuous Woman — partially as a result of being involved in the publicity and promotion of our inspirational books.

Am I convincing you that a book can do wonders for you? That this very book you are now reading can do what I have been describing up to now? Or are you saying that my examples relate to people who had special talents that would have become manifest sooner or later? If the latter, then be prepared to change your mind. I could regale you with stories of very ordinary people with no special talents who have achieved storybook successes through the "storybooks" that I have mentioned. But right now it wouldn't be worth your while to read a list of repetitious case histories. Read on with an open mind, and I am sure that before you have reached the last page you will have experienced tangible proof of what I have been trying to tell you. Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to learn of this.

Dorothea Brande, the author of Wake Up and Live!, told how reading one particular sentence in a book changed the whole course of her life. Here is part of her introduction to Wake Up and Live! in which she tells of that remarkable experience:

Two years ago I came across a formula for success which has revolutionized my life. It was so simple, and so obvious once I had seen it, that I could hardly believe it was responsible for the magical results which followed my putting it into practice.

The first thing to confess is that two years ago I was a failure. Oh, nobody knew it except me and those who knew me well enough to see that I was doing a tenth of what could be expected of me. I held an interesting position, lived not too dull a life — yet there was no doubt, in my own mind, at least, that I had failed. What I was doing was a substitute activity for what I had planned to do; and no matter how ingenious and neat the theories were which I presented to myself to account for my lack of success, I knew very well that there was more work that I should be doing, and better work, and work more demonstrably my own.

Of course, I was always looking for a way out of my impasse. But when I actually had the good fortune to find it, I hardly believed in my own luck.

For I had been years in my deadlock; I had known what I wanted to do, had equipped myself for my profession — and got nowhere. Yet I had chosen my life-work, which was writing, early, and had started out with high hopes. Most of the work I had finished had met a friendly reception. But then when I tried to take the next step and go on to a more mature phase, it was as though I had been turned to stone. I felt as if I could not start.

Of course it goes without saying that I was unhappy....

I busied myself at editing, since I seemed doomed to fail at the more creative side of literature; and I never ceased harrying myself, consulting teachers and analysts and psychologists and physicians for advice as to how to get out of my pit. . . . I tried every suggestion for relief. Nothing worked more than temporarily. For a while I might engage in feverish activity, but never for more than a week or two. Then the period of action would suddenly end, leaving me as far from my goal as ever, and each time more deeply discouraged.

Then, between one minute and the next, I found the idea which set me free. This time I was not consciously looking for it. . . . But I came across a sentence in the book I was reading: Human Personality, by F.W.H. Myers, which was so illuminating that I put the book aside to consider all the ideas suggested in that one penetrating hypothesis. When I picked up the book again I was a different person.

In a later chapter I will of course discuss the sentence that so profoundly affected Dorothea Brande. I will also reveal the conclusions that she came to about why so many of us fail to use our abilities to the full — why we don't get so many of the things we desire, despite the fact that we are fully capable of doing so. For now, I hope you are ready to believe that what happened to me, to Dorothea Brande, and to so many others through books will definitely happen to you.

So far I have been referring to so-called inspirational books, whose major theme is about the road to success and happiness. However, I have come across many other kinds of books that had nothing to do with self-improvement but which contained profound insights into human behavior. For example, a book on how to write a play, by John van Druten, taught me a principle that I used over and over in writing advertising copy; an introduction to a book on humor taught me how to educate myself on any new subject; a book about dealing with children taught me an invaluable lesson about how to deal with adults. I will discuss these books in Chapter 7 and spell out the simple yet profound principles involved. For now I just want to impress on you that any number of worthwhile books on a variety of subjects can affect your life if you are alert to the fact that they have that potential. Once you are convinced, your antennae will begin to pick up all sorts of messages that you otherwise might have missed.

But what does all this have to do with our subject? Does a book on playwriting relate to getting what you want? Or one by a child psychologist on dealing with children?

The answer is a very definite yes. Philosophical principles that favorably affect your behavior must help you get what you want. Such principles of behavior are often espoused in the least likely places. I have found them in cookbooks as well as books on philosophy or psychology. The essential thing is to be aware that this is true.

Perhaps I have belabored this point, but I did so because in my own experience I missed a great many "messages" by not being alert to the possibility of their presence in a particular situation. Being receptive, having an open mind, therefore, is most important in order to learn what you really want.

This article was excerpted from:

Know What You Want & How To Get It!
by Norman Monath.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Tom Doherty Associates, LLC. ©1984,2002. www.tor.com

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About the Author

Norman Monath was a publishing executive in New York at Simon & Schuster, and was the founder of Cornerstone Library, a large non-fiction house in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. An acclaimed musician and teacher, Monath wrote an instructional workbook entitled How to Play Popular Guitar in 10 Easy Lessons (Fireside, 1984), an easy-to-follow program for mastering the guitar in a matter of weeks. The book is in its 43rd printing having sold over 300,000 copies.