How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie – Book Review

 

People are unpredictable and most often, those who do well in life are those who know how to deal with people. This is perhaps one of the earliest books written on the subject by the writer and lecturer, Dale Carnegie, on How to Win Friends and Influence People. The skills could be useful for anyone and especially given my personality traits (overly introverted), I thought this could be a useful book.

The book is split into four parts and in each of these parts, the author preaches various ‘principles’ to influence people or gain their trust. Some of these principles include ‘do not criticise’, ‘do not argue’, ‘give a hearty praise’, etc. and all of these are supported by anecdotes from his personal life, people around him or historical personalities (he often referred to letters by Abraham Lincoln or George Washington).

Much as this book is popular and seems to have helped many people, I did not personally find this useful. Some of the principles where the author encourages empathy and urges us to see things from the other person’s perspective before coming to criticise are commendable and could be incorporated by everyone. However, this book is not about gaining meaningful friendships but being an effective salesperson and that seems to be the primary target of the author. Most of his examples are of how someone won a deal or sold a product or received a larger share of an inheritance of the lasting sorts.

My worry about the advice given in this book is that following these techniques verbatim could have an adverse effect on one’s mental health. While they could help in gaining influence, this would be retained so long as you behave this in the manner specified throughout the relationship and the book does not have a word on standing up for yourself or fulfilling your needs. I reckon if a person spends their whole lives trying to please other people in the quest for influence, at some point you would reach your breaking point on your needs never being met.

I was uncomfortable with the author celebrating people such as Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee as distinguished persons of repute in his example (both who were prominent members of the Confederacy in the US Civil War, the side that fought to have the right to ‘own slaves’). I gather that the version I had was revised, with a lot of earlier racist connotations being edited or removed – the publisher should have done enough to remove these references.

To conclude, this book is not useful – if you have a product or service to sell, please read this book. If you wish to have friends in life, this book is not going to help in that, especially on the long run. On that note, I would award the book a rating of three on ten.

Rating – 3/10

Have a nice day,
Andy