How To Win Friends And Influence People. Profiles By Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie/Late 1930s
How to Win Friends by Dale Carnegie
I was four years old and the daughter of a heavily accented father from Scotland who had gotten his Engineering degree and come to the United States to work for a large corporation. My father was considered a genius as far as his craft goes, but he was a little on the neanderthal side when it came to personal relations. I can remember crying my eyes out when my dad was going out at night to what my mother told me was "night school, to teach your father to speak." I bawled because I did not want my father to know how to speak, I liked him the way he was. In my immature mind I did not want my dad changed in any way, I thought these people were going to give him a different voice.
My father had two books, one was black with yellow letters, How To Win Friend's And Influence People, by Dale Carnegie; the other was yellow with black letters, How To Stop Worrying And Start Living, also by Dale Carnegie. They both featured a distinguished looking grey haired man on the cover. I saw those books around the house for years, they were kind of a fixture. When I reached the age of 20, I started working in sales, and the title of, How To Win Friends And Influence People became suddenly intriguing. I have never really put the book down since! Every time I felt frustrated by my sales percentage, I would read through this book to refresh my memory, and sure enough I would be in the top executives list once again. This book is one of the greatest sellers of all time, and the style in which it is written has become a kind of template for motivational and "how to" books today. It is truly a remarkable read in many ways.
It was first published in 1936 and not only are the examples very entertaining, but because of the books age, they have a kind of light history lesson quality. I personally enjoy history, not just dates and facts, but I like to delve into what people were like, and how they spoke, what their views were; to me that is history and its fascinating. This is why I would recommend that one try to find a used copy rather than one of the How To Win Friend's And Influence People books that were published after the 1990's. I understand that they have taken the liberty of editing the book from its original state because some of the words and historical names from this book are archaic today.
With such classic titles as, "If You Want To Gather Honey Don't Kick Over The Beehive", "Do This and You'll Be Welcome Anywhere, and "The High Road to a Man's Reason", Mr. Carnegie has educated people in the art of Public Speaking and taught us how to deal with people for over almost 70 years. I have personally read many books about public speaking, self motivation, and entrepreneurship, and this is the only book that I can re-read again and again. The points he makes are based on the often not used common sense, and are used to lead us to examine some of the major errors we make when talking to others. Carnegie uses examples to remind us to "be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires", pointing out to us that people have egos and are sensitive about being told that they are wrong.
Many of this book's chapter's are titled with questions such as, "The Movies do It, Radio Does it. Why Don't You Do It?" Studies have shown that question based selling peeks a person's interest and influences them to continue reading. Readers are curious, and want to get at the answer. Dale Carnegie frequently makes mention of Abraham Lincoln, using various examples from Lincoln's life, and how he became the great communicator. Carnegie was very knowledgeable about Abraham Lincoln because years before writing , How to Win Friend's and Influence People, he wrote 
For anyone interested in growing their business, increasing their sales revenue, or if they just need to learn how to get along with people better in social situations, this book is a must.
