How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Identification Nonfiction book designed to help people develop and maintain positive personal and professional relationships

Author Dale Carnegie

Date First published in 1936

In the midst of the Great Depression, How to Win Friends and Influence People offered people a number of ideas to improve their interpersonal skills and thereby improve the quality of their lives. In this context, it was the first self-help book to become a best seller.

How to Win Friends and Influence People was written by Dale Carnegie, a self-made man who rose from an impoverished farming family to become a prime mover in the self-improvement publishing movement. As published in 1936, the book contained six sections: “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,” “Letters That Produced Miraculous Results,” and “Eight Rules for Making Your Home Life Happier.” Subsequent editions were published without the last two sections.

Impact

Carnegie’s easy-to-read writing style, commonsense advice, and frequent use of anecdotes made this book a popular read among many people across the social spectrum of the 1930s. It helped improve people’s ability to interact with others and led to improvements in people’s self-esteem, increasing the likelihood that their own needs were met. This book provided a positive outlook during the period of the Great Depression and though some of the language and references became outdated, the general advice of the book continued to remain relevant to generations of readers into the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Carnegie, Dale. How to Win Friends and Influence People. Simon & Schuster, 2009.

Doherty, Mike. "After Eight Decades, Dale Carnegie Continues to Influence Oprah, Warren Buffett and . . . Tony Montana?" National Post, 24 Nov. 2016, news.nationalpost.com/arts/books/book-reviews/after-eight-decades-dale-carnegie-continues-to-influence-oprah-warren-buffett-and-tony-montana. Accessed 30 Nov. 2016.

Duke, Allison, and Milorad M. Novicevic. “Historical Foundations of Social Effectiveness? Dale Carnegie’s Principles.” Social Influence, vol. 3, no. 2, 2008, pp. 132–42.

Feloni, Richard. "12 Timeless Lessons from One of Warren Buffett's Favorite Books, How to Win Friends & Influence People." Business Insider, 14 Apr. 2015, www.businessinsider.com/lessons-from-how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people-2015-4. Accessed 30 Nov. 2016.

Simmons, Michael. "How To Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age." Forbes, 9 Sept. 2014, www.forbes.com/sites/michaelsimmons/2014/09/09/how-to-win-friends-and-influence-people-in-the-digital-age/#36cb1dca2dea. Accessed 30 Nov. 2016.