A brief, no fluff, summary of Dale Carnegieâs How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Techniques in Handling People
Six ways to make people like you
Win people to your way of thinking
Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment
***
On criticism
Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a personâs precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment. â¦. Any fool can criticize, condemn and complainâand most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.
That reminds me of this famous quote by Thomas Carlyle: âA great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.â
On dealing with people
When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
On influence
[T]he only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.
On the secret of success
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other personâs point of view and see things from that personâs angle as well as from your own.
How to Win Friends and Influence People is a self-help book written by Dale Carnegie, published in 1936. Over 15 million copies have been sold worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time.[1] In 2011, it was number 19 on Time Magazine's list of the 100 most influential books.[2]
In 1934, Leon Shimkin of the publishing firm Simon & Schuster took one of Carnegie's 14-week courses; afterward, Shimkin persuaded Carnegie to let a stenographer take notes from the course to be revised for publication. The book sold exceptionally well from the start, going through 17 editions in its first year alone.
In 1981, a revised edition containing updated language and anecdotes was released.[3] The revised edition reduced the number of sections from six to four, eliminating sections on effective business letters and improving marital satisfaction.
Major sections and points[edit]Twelve Things This Book Will Do For You[edit]
The book has six major sections. The core principles of each section are explained and quoted from below.[4]
Fundamental Techniques in Handling People[edit]
Six Ways to Make People Like You[edit]
Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking[edit]
Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment[edit]
Letters That Produced Miraculous Results[edit]
Seven Rules For Making Your Home Life Happier[edit]
Origins[edit]
Before How to Win Friends and Influence People was released, the genre of self-help books had an ample heritage. Authors such as Napoleon Hill, Orison Swett Marden, and Samuel Smiles had enormous success with their self-help books in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dale Carnegie began his career not as a writer, but as a teacher of public speaking. He started out teaching night classes at a YMCA in New York and his classes became wildly popular and highly attended. The success of the classes in New York prompted YMCAs in Philadelphia and Baltimore to begin hosting the course as well.[7] After even greater success, Carnegie decided to begin teaching the courses on his own at hotels in London, Paris, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Because he could not find any satisfactory handbook already in publication, Carnegie originally began writing small booklets to go along with his courses.[8] After one of his 14-week courses, he was approached by publisher Leon Shimkin of the publishing house Simon & Schuster.[9] Shimkin urged Carnegie to write a book, but he was not initially persuaded. Shimken then hired a stenographer to type up what he heard in one of Carnegie's long lectures and presented the transcript to Carnegie.[10] Dale Carnegie liked the transcript so much he decided to edit and revise it into a final form.[11] He wanted it to be extremely practical and interesting to read. To market the book, Shimkin decided to send 500 copies of the book to former graduates of the Dale Carnegie Course, with a note that pointed out the utility of the book for refreshing students with the advice they had learned.[12]:141 The 500 mailed copies brought orders for over 5,000 more copies of the book and Simon & Schuster had to increase the original print order of 1,200 quickly.[12]:142 Shimkin also ran a full page ad in the New York Times complete with quotes by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller on the importance of human relations.[13] Originally published in November 1936, the book reached the New York Times best-seller list by the end of the year, and did not fall off for the next two years.[12]:141 Simon & Schuster continued to advertise the book relying heavily on testimonials as well as the testable approach the book offered.[13]
Reception[edit]
How to Win Friends and Influence People became one of the most successful books in American history. It went through 17 print editions in its first year of publishing and sold 250,000 copies in the first three months. The book has sold over 15 million copies worldwide since and annually sells in excess of 100,000 copies.[1] A recent Library of Congress survey ranked Carnegie's volume as the seventh most influential book in American history.[14]
The book met widespread popularity, but also stark criticism in many cases. Despite many of the negative comments from his critics, Carnegie's book established a new genre. Carnegie described his book as an 'action-book' but the category he created has since become known as the self-help genre. Almost every self-help book since has borrowed some type of style or form from Carnegie's 'path-breaking best seller.'[15]
Although How to Win Friends and Influence People ascended quickly on best-seller lists, the New York Times did not review it until February 1937. They offered a balanced criticism arguing that Carnegie indeed offered insightful advice in dealing with people, but that his wisdom was extremely simple and should not overrule the foundation of actual knowledge.[16]
The satirical writer Sinclair Lewis waited a year to offer his scathing critique. He described Carnegie's method as teaching people to 'smile and bob and pretend to be interested in other people's hobbies precisely so that you may screw things out of them.'[17][18] However, despite the criticism, sales continued to soar and the book was talked about and reviewed as it rapidly became mainstream.
Scholarly critique however, was little and oscillated over time. Due to the book's lay appeal, it was not significantly discussed in academic journals. In the early stages of the book's life, the few scholarly reviews that were written explained the contents of the book and attempted to describe what made the book popular.[19] As time passed however, scholarly reviews became more critical, chiding Carnegie for being insincere and manipulative.[20]
Despite the lack of attention in academic circles, How to Win Friends and Influence People was written for a popular audience and Carnegie successfully captured the attention of his target. The book experienced mass consumption and appeared in many popular periodicals, including garnering 10 pages in the January 1937 edition of Reader's Digest.[21]
The book continued to remain at the top of best-seller lists and was even noted in the New York Times to have been extremely successful in Nazi Germany, much to the writer's bewilderment. He wrote that Carnegie would rate 'butter higher than guns as a means of winning friends' something 'diametrically opposite to the official German view.'[22]
How to Win Friends and Influence People continues to have success even into the 21st century. The book ranks as the 11th highest selling non-fiction book on Amazon of all time and shows no signs of slowing down.[23]
In popular culture[edit]
References[edit]
External links[edit]
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People&oldid=904206101'
Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
Six Ways to Make People Like You
Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking
Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment
Seven Rules For Making Your Home Life Happier
Published 80 years ago, it contains universal principles of interacting with other people that ring true even today. Since its publishing, much has changed about the way we access information, work, and communicate â but little has changed about human nature and what we crave from other people.
In this
How to Get the Most Out of
Changing your behavior is hard. No one read the 10 commandments and suddenly stopped coveting things. When youâre in the thick of an argument, you totally forget that youâre supposed to see the other personâs viewpoint, because Becky is being a real nuisance and how can she possibly believe what sheâs saying.
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