Hugh Prather

Hugh Edmondson Prather III (January 23, 1938 – November 15, 2010) was an American self-help writer, lay minister, and counselor, most famous for his first book, Notes to Myself, which was first published in 1970 by Real People Press, and later reprinted by Bantam Books. It has sold over 5 million copies, and has been translated into ten languages.

Hugh Prather's father, Hugh Prather, Jr., grandfather, Hugh Prather, Sr., and great grandfather John S. Armstrong, contributed to the growth of the city of Dallas, Texas. With his father-in-law John S. Armstrong and Armstrong's other son-in-law Edgar Flippen, Prather, Sr., helped plan and build the town of Highland Park, which is now part of the enclave Park Cites surrounded by the city of Dallas. In 1931, Armstrong and his two sons-in-law built Highland Park Village, the first planned shopping center in the United States. Hugh Prather, Jr., ran the shopping center after his father's death.

Hugh Prather III was born in Dallas and earned a bachelor's degree at Southern Methodist University in 1966 after study at Principia College and Columbia University. He studied at the University of Texas at the graduate level without taking a degree.

While he could be categorized as a New Age writer, Prather drew on Christian language and themes and seemed comfortable conceiving of God in personal terms. His work underscored the importance of gentleness, forgiveness, and loyalty; declined to endorse dramatic claims about the power of the individual mind to effect unilateral transformations of external material circumstances; and stressed the need for the mind to let go of destructive cognitions in a manner not unlike that encouraged by the cognitive-behavioral therapy of Aaron T. Beck and the rational emotive behavior therapy commended by Albert Ellis.

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