Book Reviews

How to win friends and influence people
Author: Dale Carnegie (Publisher Pocket Books 1981)

This book is probably the best known of its type on human relationships in the world. While originally written in 1936, its lessons still very much apply today. It includes numerous lesson points and many real life stories on how to apply them. While a few of the lessons are obvious, the majority of lessons are not! It’s a very practical book full of lessons that can be immediately used.

The lessons in the book can be broadly categorized in four groups and can be applied either at home or at work:

Personal Relationships – Covers the fundamental lessons we need to know understand to develop and build friendships. For example, one of the lessons covers the basic human need for people to feel important and that credible attempts to make others feel important will strengthen that relationship. This area definitely a must in finding and meeting new friends.

Sales Techniques – Includes many lessons on how to influence people to your way of thinking. The lessons covered in this area are what many today would refer to as modern day “soft sell” techniques.

Management Techniques – Covers how to get people to do what you’d like them to do. This is what modern day management books are about, but Dale Carnegie clearly beat them to the punch given that he published his original book in 1936. Management techniques can also be applied to running a household, club or other non-business organization.

Leadership Techniques – Provides great insight into how great leaders managed critical relationships during key junctures in their life. It’s not very often that you get the chance to get an inside “birds eye” view of how great leaders such as Abraham Lincoln operated.

Bottom line: This book is a must read! It’s one of those classics that never goes out of style.

Final note: When this reviewer was at the bookstore and pulled the book from the shelf, an 18 year old girl standing there stated that this book had changed her life! She noted that she had developed more new friends in the past year than in the previous 17 years.