[2] Nightingale was the author of The Strangest Secret, which economist Terry Savage has termed "…one of the great motivational books of all time.
He was an instructor at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and was on the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor and was one of fifteen surviving Marines aboard that day.
During the autumn of 1949, Nightingale was inspired while reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
It was titled, Think and Grow Rich: The Essence Of The Immortal Book By Napoleon Hill, Narrated by Earl Nightingale, and produced by Success Motivation Institute.
Nightingale's radio program, Our Changing World, became the most syndicated radio program ever, and was broadcast across the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, South Africa, the Bahamas, and 23 additional overseas countries, as well as the Armed Forces Network.
Just prior to his death during 1989, Nightingale created a new format for a book named The Winner’s Notebook.
Nightingale died on March 25, 1989, in Scottsdale, Arizona, of complications after heart surgery.