For more than sixty years the rock-solid, time-tested advice in this book has carried thousands of now famous people up the ladder of success in their business and personal lives.

Now this previously revised and updated bestseller is available in trade paperback for the first time to help you achieve your maximum potential throughout the next century! Learn:

* THREE FUNDAMENTAL TECHNIQUES IN HANDLING PEOPLE

* THE SIX WAYS TO MAKE PEOPLE LIKE YOU

* THE TWELVE WAYS TO WIN PEOPLE TO YOUR WAY OF THINKING

* THE NINE WAYS TO CHANGE PEOPLE WITHOUT AROUSING RESENTMENT

How To Win Friends and Influence People is a must read for anyone who wants to achieve success.


More than just getting along well with people   February 4, 2004
 134 out of 145 found this review helpful

I think the title of this book may be misleading in that just about everyone can get along with people, and win friends. The part of the title that most people was is the abaility to influence others especially in a way that makes them happy and willing to do what you ask.

As a supervisor for a department of 50 people, I found it was easy to get people to do what I asked them becuase I was the boss. After reading How To Win Friends and Influence People, I was able to get people to do what I asked not because I was there supervisor, because they wanted to.

In addition, I have always found that there are always some people (many times my supervisors) who completely lack people skills. Dale Carnegies book taugh me how to work with those people as well.

I highly recommend How To Win Friends and Influence People to anyone who wants to significantly improve their people skills and especially their ability to positively influence people.

Great book!


Ironically powerful and effective.   February 5, 2004
 134 out of 150 found this review helpful

When I first came across How To Win Friends and Influence People, my first thought was; "What a crock of _ _ _ _!" Then I met a guy named Barry. He was the best people person I had ever met. Interesting, he had been a employee of Dale Carnegie and
had been through all the trainings and read all of Mr. Carnegie's books. Needless to say, he highly recommended this book in particular and the Carnegie techniques.

How To Win Friends and Influence People is a powerful book loaded with timeless information. It made such a difference in my life that soon after reading this book, I recieved a promotion that I had been passed over for previously.

The only real power is PEOPLE POWER!! This book shows you to get that power.


Great book Mr. Carnegie.   February 9, 2004
 129 out of 140 found this review helpful

A friend of mine just got me started in a network marketing company. I asked his upline what is the best way to get my business started off quickly. And he said, "people--you need to go out and meet people."

I was ready to quit. Nobody I knew would be a good candidate for a business and meeting new people and approaching them on a business opportunity scared the heck out of me.

He suggested that I read How To Win Friends and Influence People and that this book would teach me what I needed to know to develop the ability to positively influence other people. Cool.

I read the book and it worked. I overcame my fears and created a great downline. Now I am recommending How To Win Friends and Influence People to everyone I know. By the way, I also overcame my fear of public speaking and am conducting both business presentations and trainings for my reps.

The book is great. I highly recommend it.


This book is now obsolete.   September 19, 2001
 126 out of 386 found this review helpful

"Today we come across an individual who behaves like an automation, who does not know or understand himself, and the only person that he knows is the person that he is supposed to be, whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech, whose synthetic smile has replaced genuine laughter, and whose sense of dull despair has taken the place of genuine pain...he suffers from defects of spontaneity and individuality..." As I can validate with the man who recommended this book to me, this observation by Erich Fromm is 100% on target with "Win Friends and Influence People".

This man, who practiced this book, presented himself as superficial, artificial, irregular, and consequently very annoying. He proved to me that these techniques do not facilitate communication- they stifle it. Instead of being direct, this man would only have the courage to give hints or make indirect statements in the form of questions. If I would attempt to explain something to him he didn't understand, he would immediately light up and go, "Oh! I see what you mean buddy." In my head I would think 'You couldn't possibly understand- I didn't even start explaining!' But that's how this "Win Friends" philosphy made him- he's not willing to go through any difficulty at all to understand and communicate with others.

The techniques in this book basically converted this man into a robot. Nobody really knows what kinds of things he's interested in - although at first you think his interests have a lot in common with yours. The man has no sincerity or credibility. When I see him smiling I don't know if he is genuinly happy or just trying to appear pleasant. When he says he agrees with me, it means nothing because he always seems to agree with everyone. I've come to take his liberal and exaggerated complements of me as insults because in doing this, he ignores what is truly worth praise and I know that anything he does for me is really only for his image.

I'll sum up this book for you:
1. Fake interest in other people's hobbies to get what you want out of them.
2. Pretend to agree with whatever people tell you so you'll be more popular.
3. Only express positive feelings ; do away with sincerity.
4. Make false excuses for your actions that people would be embarrased to turn down, called "Appealing to the Nobler Motives."
5. Talk your way out of what you behave yourself into (as if this was possible).

I witnessed the ineffectiveness of a man who devoted himself to this book; I tried this book myself for a while. My conclusions: It contains nothing more than deceptive, manipulative, superficial techniques that have no use and will lead to the detriment of yourself and your relationships. Instead, I recommend reading the book that made this one obsolete: "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Dr. Stephen R. Covey.