Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 Mixed Feelings July 31, 2008
This is a good book, no doubt about it. It was written a long time ago, but much of the advice contained within its pages is timeless and pertinent no matter what era we live in.
There is some advice in this book, though, that is a little dated. I feel just some of the tips for dealing with people would not work out the same way in today's world with current attitudes.
How To Win Friends And Influence People is definitely worth reading, but I think the reader really needs to analyze all the advice and adjust and tweak things a little to be useful in today's society.
Overall an excellent book.
How To Keep Your Man: And Keep Him For Good
Real Life Dramas - Volume One: 1
Darren G. Burton
 One of the best books I read June 20, 2008
I heard of this book few years ago and did mistake by not purchasing then.
This book is easy to understand and follow. Not preaching or teaching; just simple examples to get point across.
How reading a single book can change your life! June 4, 2008
It's true, when I was 16 years old I (like many others I have now found out since then) read my first book about business. I was drawn to it in a small, old fashioned book shop that's no longer in business. At the time I didn't really know any entrepreneurs or people that ran their own business and I had no mentor to point me in the right direction. The book simply "spoke" to me and I grabbed it and bought it.
Weird stuff. Especially as at the time I was a quiet, shy sort of a guy but in my heart I had a burning ambition - I just didn't realise it yet!
The books name was "How to Win Friends and Influence People" - You must have heard of it I am sure but I hadn't at the time and I would say that `personal development' was not the juggernaut it is today.
It changed my life (for the better) - it gave me confidence in general and more importantly it lit a small flame to start my own business that grew and grew until I did just that two years later at 18 years old.
So what you may say, plenty of people have done that! Well it was quite a shift for me, my father only ever worked for 2 companies his whole life and I was expected to go into a life long job myself in biotechnology or something similar - certainly not to waste my `brains' on cleaning offices and cars!!
The book made me change me outlook on life completely - it made me `think' that I could do anything I put my mind to doing and it also gave the courage to get over my shyness at key moments in my life.
It was the start of life long reading habit (before that I couldn't be bothered with reading and we had very few books in my house as a kid) - even to this day 20+ years later I still go and get a few books on a topic if I want to learn something new.
Also, I have adopted the strength to face all my fears `head-on' since then - when i felt anxious about public speaking I got a few books and tapes and learnt until I was pretty good at it, the same for selling, marketing, finance, hr, technology, programming, manufacturing, teaching, training and on and on.
I became curious about other people and looked for the `good' in them and I feared nothing and no-one. I strived for my goals and I achieved them all.
I am trying to illustrate the power of the written word along with a great (if a little dated) book. Also, I want to reiterate the power of personal development as a whole. Today many run down the idea of personal development and it's many offspring.
Personal development is just like this book - you should read and learn and then apply the principles that you believe in to your life.
You must take action on the one's you believe in and you must apply your own moral standards and integrity to anything you learn from others.
For my part I have read this book many times and bought a few copies as well as the tapes, now CDs, it's time for a refresher for me and i urge you to listen to them if you haven't already.
So obvious :-) May 1, 2008
After having read this book my only thought was "of course" ... Why didn't I think of this before.
The book is actually common sense - but we might all need a reminder.
Dated, but still of value if you go with the flow April 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There are two ways you can look at Dale Carnegie's seminal personal development work, written in 1936 but based on Carnegie's lecture notes from 1912 onwards, last revised by him in the 1950s - he died in 1955 - and thereafter by his wife and daughter:
1. It is an out-of-date book, quoting examples of once influential people all long since dead, like Abe Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, John Rockefeller, Charles Schwab and others of whom even the best read will probably never have heard, and which espouses a series of unsubtle, insincere and manipulative techniques to get people to do what you want. Who, after all, wishes to "win" friends when you might, by simply being a nice person, "make" them?
2. It is an easy to read, simple and sincere book. Written by a farmer's boy from Missouri, who became a successful salesman, the first personal development guru and thence a self-made multi-millionaire, it is still a useful guide to being effective if you are prepared to "go with the flow" of somewhat dated examples and somewhat homespun wisdom.
This book is dated but to me that makes in interesting as a period piece as much as a commentary on the human condition - which surely has not changed that much in a mere 50 years. Dale Carnegie collected the profound and the practical, and his philosophy is actually to be as passive in influencing as you can be. He extols the virtue, for example, of influencing others only be complimenting them on what they have done well (without ever criticising them for what they may have done badly). If you have to be influenced - or even manipulated - by anyone, then you would mind less if was done the Carnegie way, which is relentlesly polite.
Perhaps there are better personal development book for this type. "The seven habits" by Steven Covey is certainly less dated, and is perhaps based on a more developed meta-philosophy, but (and for all Mr Covey suggests) it owes more than a little to Dale Carnegie, and they both share a common sage in Benjamin Franklin.
Sometimes these days you do have to criticise people, however, to correct them straight away and with clarity. In his day, for example, you may have been able to "let someone go" while saying only nice things about them - you certainly can't do that in the UK today. In those cases, Carnegie is of less help perhaps than some more modern writers and thinkers.
Dale Carnegie is still worth reading. If you don't know who the people he quotes or mentions are, check them out on Wikipedia. This may not be the last word on being a better (or mre effective) person, but there is little in it that is not helpful. 236 pages worth reading.
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