George Samuel Clason was born in 1874 in Louisiana, Missouri. He was an American author, most famous for his book The Richest Man in Babylon (1926). He attended the University of Nebraska and served in the United States Army during the Spanish-American War. Clason started two companies, the Clason Publishing Company and the Clason Map Company of Denver Colorado which was the first company to publish a road atlas of the United States and Canada. He is best known for writing a series of informational pamphlets about being thrifty and how to achieve financial success.