A prolific writer for various industry publications, his inspirational essays began to appear on the "Words To Live By" page of This Week magazine in 1960 (which was distributed in 42 metropolitan Sunday newspapers with over 13 million readers).
Peterson was regarded as "one of the best loved American writers of the 20th century, renowned for his inspirational wisdom and aphoristic wit" by the Independent Publishers Group.
His contemporaries include Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie, and current writers and philosophers such as Jack Canfield and Brian Tracy have referred to Peterson's works.
His most well known writing, The Art of Marriage,[2] has been called by Souvenir Press the "most frequently recited English-language wedding poems and one of the greatest odes to matrimony.
He was awarded the George Washington medal from Freedom's Foundation at Valley Forge for "outstanding achievement in bringing about a better understanding of American way of life."