"To live free in an unfree world requires a change of mental outlook." (Orison Swett Marden) (1850 - 1924).

He was the biographer of the Gilded Age and founded Success magazine during a period when the US economy was freer than it had been any time before or after. Marden admired the great men and women of this period, and he became their preferred philosopher, inspiring the likes of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, and J.P. Morgan.

The Joys of Living is his instruction book for a rich, full, and free life. This 100th-anniversary edition shows that his prose has lost none of its original power - and it is even more relevant now that we are faced with more obstacles to success. His core point is to look beyond the obstacles and become hyper-aware of the opportunities. He shows how in chapters on mental outlook, debt and money, reading and family life, hope and despair, and young and old age.

The greatest discovery of the time, he writes, was not a technology but a philosophy. It was the philosophy that the individual human mind was the most productive resource on the planet, more powerful than all the natural resources or manmade machinery. It was the human mind that was the real source of progress and prosperity. Previous generations believed they were trapped by fate, by class, by social position, or by forces more powerful than they. This generation saw the truth that nothing could contain an idea whose time had come, so long as there were great men and women around who believed in it and acted on it.