David J. Schwartz

Taught marketing at Georgia State and published The Magic of Thinking Big in 1959. It has never been out of print since.

The argument is unfashionably plain: most people fail from small thinking rather than small ability, and excuses get constructed after the decision to quit has already been made. It is a period piece in places, with a 1950s American office and all its assumptions intact, women included. It also predates and quietly supplies most of the motivational writing that came after it, which is why the same lines keep turning up in newer books without a citation anywhere near them.