first edition of Wattles’ classic

Why Read The Science of Getting Rich?

This “golden oldie” with the gauche title runs deeper than you may think

Mitch Horowitz
5 min readMay 23, 2024

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Next to Think and Grow Rich, I have never encountered a work of modern self-development that means more to more people — me included — than The Science of Getting Rich.

In his 1910 book, author Wallace D. Wattles (1860–1911), a combination of social reformer and spiritual radical once found in the Progressive Era, attempted to distill practical metaphysics for the masses.

Wattles ploughed through Hegel, Emerson, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Kant, and world religious literature to determine the connection between thought and experience. His extreme idealism announced itself without embarrassment as The Science of Getting Rich.

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Mitch Horowitz
Mitch Horowitz

Written by Mitch Horowitz

"Treats esoteric ideas & movements with an even-handed intellectual studiousness"-Washington Post | PEN Award-winning historian | Censored in China

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