As a Man Thinketh

James Allen's little book makes one claim and follows it into every corner of life: a person is what he thinks, and character, circumstances, health and achievement grow from thought as a plant grows from a seed. In seven short chapters he argues that circumstances do not make a man but reveal him to himself, that aimless thinking is a kind of weakness, that purpose and self-control can be learned, and that serenity is the reward of a mind brought under command.

Allen, an English writer who gave up office work to live and write quietly in Devon, published the book at the start of the twentieth century, and it became a model for a hundred years of self-help writing. Mark Cawley reads it alone, in under an hour.