How to Win Friends and Influence People
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Hardcover - USA - First edition - First printing. |
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How to Win Friends and Influence People is a self-help book by Dale Carnegie published in October 1936. It was the first extremely popular self-help book and has since sold over 30,000,000 copies putting it in the top five most-sold non-fiction titles. The book is based on a business lecture course sold by Dale Carnegie and expanded on the pamphlets used in the course. In 1981, it was reworked and more modern anecdotes were used to keep the book relevant. The book is on the Library of Congress's list of Books That Shaped America.
The book has been mentioned in various forms of media. For example, it's briefly mentioned in an episode of Daria.
Personal
| Own? | No. |
|---|---|
| Read? | 1981 version - Audiobook read by Andrew MacMillan. |
| Finished | 2024-06-16. |
I don't remember exactly where I first heard about this book, but I have since heard it mentioned many times from multiple sources. After seeing it was also listed in the Library of Congress's Books That Shaped America, I decided to finally read it and see what the fuss was about. I ended up being quite disappointed.
Review
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Overall: |
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Good
- I can see why the book initially became popular as it was one of the first of its kind and makes some pretty bold promises about business and interpersonal relationships. Its premise, that you will have a better chance endearing yourself to others and getting what you want out of them by avoiding all criticism and instead being kind, having a friendly disposition, showing gratitude, and heaping on praise, seems to be generally true, and, therefore, good advice, at least in short-term dealings. None of this was anything new in 1936, the book itself quotes various people going back decades and even centuries who make similar claims, but the book compiles a variety of ways to do this.
Bad
- A lot of the tricks in the book may be effective in the short-term, but they don't seem sustainable. For example, one tip for getting others to like you is to become genuinely interested in what another person cares about, and, if you don't find what they like interesting, you're told to still pretend as though you're interested. While this may work for a few minutes or even a couple hours, I can't imagine having to pretend to like something I find distasteful for months or years.
- I've noticed sales people and charlatans using on me some of the same tricks described in this book, and found them to be insulting. No doubt there are experts who could use these tricks in a way I wouldn't notice, but, typically when I notice that someone is trying to trick me into liking them, I find them to be manipulative and it only makes me angry.
- Some of the tricks in the book seem entirely suspect. For example, the author says purposely disparaging yourself and your business will disarm people who are already critical of you and your business, and this will make them more receptive to liking you and your business. However, I tend to find self-deprecation to be either phony or annoying, which causes it to backfire. If a business owner frequently talks about how inferior their product is, why would anyone want to buy it?
- About a dozen times in the book the author repeats a sentence, sometimes in its entirety, to show emphasis. While this is a common tactic in speeches, there are better methods in printed works. Using a bold font, for example, or simply telling the reader to re-read the previous sentence.
- The title is slightly misleading as it makes the book out to be for people looking to make more friends, however, nearly everything the book is related to business interactions between bosses, subordinates, clients, and so forth.
- The introduction includes several pages of self-congratulations. Ironically, this is something that is discouraged in the book because people tend to find it off-putting, which I did.
Ugly
- Despite the introduction claiming the contents of the book were verified by scientific research (while also claiming the tricks work like "magic"), I found the book to be exclusively filled with romanticized anecdotes, appeals to authority, appeals to celebrity, and quotes from famous figures and ancient writings. I don't remember the author ever once referencing a single scientific experiment, and many of the retold stories seem to be so peppered with embellishments, I can't possibly believe they're true. The introduction explains how the book began simply as a bulleted list printed on a note card, and, if you were to exclude all the anecdotes and quotes, I bet it could return to that size, as there is almost nothing of substance.
- The section on mental illness is quite dangerous. The author opines that only half of mental illness is attributed to actual biological causes like brain legions or substance abuse, and then concludes that the other half must be people pretending to have a mental illnesses to get attention! The book was written long before the understanding of how brain chemicals work, and, because the author didn't understand what he was missing, he made a horrible blunder.
Media
Covers
Hardcover - USA - First edition - First printing - Dust jacket.
Hardcover - USA - First edition - First printing - Boards.
Links
