Are You Upward Bound

This book was written by William G. Fern and “Raphael Delmonte” in 1931 (Delmonte is one of PB’s known aliases). One of a series of self-help books written by Fern, the central conceit of this volume is a Horatio Alger take on the power of positive thinking to achieve success in business. During the 1920s and '30s PB alternated between writing these sorts of upbeat exhortations to trust in the power of one’s own attitude and articles on occultism—both topics he would criticize for their naïveté in his later works.