Archives: Authors

GEORGE SAMUEL CLASON was born in Louisiana, Missouri, on 7 November 1874. He attended the University of Nebraska and served in the United States Army during the Spanish-American War. Beginning a long career in publishing, he founded the Clason Map Company of Denver, Colorado, and published the first road atlas of the United States and Canada. In 1926, he issued the first of a famous series of pamphlets on thrift and financial success, using parables set in ancient Babylon to make each of his points. These pamphlets were distributed in large quantities by banks and insurance companies and became familiar to millions, the most famous being ‘The Richest Man in Babylon,’ the parable from which the present volume takes its title. These ‘Babylonian parables’ have become a modern inspirational classic.

DR JOSEPH MURPHY was a world-renowned authority on mysticism and mind dynamics. He wrote, taught, counselled, and lectured to thousands of people all over the world as the minister-director of the Church of Divine Science in Los Angeles. His sermons and lectures were attended by numerous people every Sunday. During his lifetime, he authored over thirty outstanding self-help books-selling more than fifteen million copies. His book, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind, continues to be an all-time bestseller. To this day, Dr Joseph Murphy remains a beacon of enlightenment and inspiration to his legion of loyal followers.

NAPOLEON HILL was an American journalist, lecturer and author, born in 1883 in a one-room cabin on the Pound River in Wise County, Virginia. He began his writing career at the age of thirteen as a ‘mountain reporter’ for small-town newspapers and went on to become America’s most beloved motivational author. Hill passed away in November 1970 after a long and successful career in writing, teaching, and delivering lectures on the principles of success. Dr Hill’s work stands as a monument to individual achievement and is the cornerstone of modern motivation. His book, Think and Grow Rich, is an all-time bestseller.

Dale Carnegie, known as ‘the arch-priest of the art of making friends’, pioneered the development of personal business skills, self-confidence and motivational techniques. His books – most notably How to Win Friends and Influence People – have sold tens of millions worldwide and, even in today’s changing climate, they remain as popular as ever.

Dasho Tshering Tobgay is a Bhutanese politician, environmentalist, and cultural advocate having served as Bhutan’s first leader of the opposition party from 2008 to 2013, and as Prime Minister from 2013 to 2018. He is currently the Prime Minister of Bhutan, after winning the elections in 2023.

Dasho Tshering was a civil servant before he joined active politics. He was the first official to resign from his work to take part in his country’s transition to a parliamentary democracy. He was responsible for establishing the People’s Democratic Party as the first registered political party in Bhutan and continues to serve as its president.

As an advocate of Gross National Happiness, he has spoken about conservation, climate change, poverty, democracy and happiness in various international conferences.

Born in 1883 in Lebanon, Kahlil Gibran was a writer, artist and a poet whose most influential works till now remains The Prophet. Having studied art in Paris, Gibran also curated hundreds of paintings and drawings. In 1920, he co-founded a literary society, The Pen-bond Society (also known as Al Rabitat al Qualamiya) along with other poets of Arab and Lebanese origin. Gibran passed away in New York City on April 10, 1931.

Born on April 15, 1843, in New York City, Henry James came from a privileged and intellectual family. This environment fostered a love for literature and ideas from an early age. His family’s intellectual pursuits and emphasis on education nurtured his passion for literature and refined his writing skills. Before achieving fame as a novelist, James wrote literary criticism, travel essays, and short stories. His early works included A Passionate Pilgrim (1871) and Roderick Hudson (1875), which garnered some attention but did not immediately establish him as a literary sensation.Novels such as Daisy Miller (1878) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881) brought him widespread recognition for his keen psychological insights and finely wrought characters. James’s writing style was characterized by intricate prose, nuanced character development, and a deep exploration of the inner lives of his characters.

Phanish Puranam’s research in the field of organizational science focuses on how organizations work, and how we can make them work better. He is known for his work using computational methods to study organizations as complex adaptive systems.

Phanish holds the Roland Berger Chair Professorship in Strategy & Organization Design at INSEAD. He leads the “Organizations and Algorithms” research program (supported by the Desmarais Fund at INSEAD) which has trained several doctoral students who are themselves now faculty at leading business schools, and which involves collaborators from around the world.

He is also an avid reader and writer of haiku.