Claude M. Bristol served as a soldier in WW1 in France and Germany. He worked on the army newspaper, Stars and Stripes until 1919. His best known book is The Magic of Believing, published in 1948, which has sold well over a million copies, and is widely regarded as a prosperity classic.
The Magic of Believing was written, he says, for ex-service men and women who would have to adjust to civilian life and try to prosper in it. It was published when he was in his 50s and followed the success of a small book he published in 1932 entitled T.N.T.–It Rocks The Earth.
Claude Bristol was a hard-headed journalist for several years, including stints as a police reporter and as church editor of a large city newspaper. In this post he met people from every denomination and sect, and later read hundreds of books on psychology, religion, science, metaphysics and ancient magic. Gradually, Bristol began to see the 'golden thread' which runs through all religions and esoteric teachings: that belief itself has amazing powers.
Every person is the creation of himself, the image of his own thinking and believing. As individuals think and believe, so they are.