Smiley Blanton

Born in Ohio, USA, in 1898, Norman Vincent Peale grew up helping support his family by delivering newspapers, working in a grocery store, and selling pots and pans door to door, but later was to become one of the most influential clergymen in the 20th-century. Educated at Ohio Wesleyan University and Boston University, he went on to become a reporter on the Findlay, Ohio, Morning Republic prior to entering the ministry and went on to author some 40 books. Peale confessed that as a youth he had 'the worst inferiority complex of all', and developed his positive thinking philosophy just to help himself. He died in 1993 aged 95.