How to Win Friends

39 reviews for How to Win Friends

Kyle N.
Rated 2 out of 5
September 23, 2024
2.0 out of 5 stars There's better books out there This book does a decent job of introducing the reader to basic concepts of interpersonal habits that lead to likeability, but the anecdotes given within, coupled with the matter-of-fact tone of the author, give the impression of someone trying to enforce his ideas with endless appeals to ethos. What would have really helped make this book less of a slog and more enlightening is testimony from psychologists or experts of the time. Instead, Dale invokes Confucius alongside laymen of the time, Napoleon alongside FDR in his chapter on remembering names, creating a web of loose-connections strung together to support his ideas. This becomes exhausting as each chapter introduces dozens of new people to draw lessons from, and becomes even more exhausting as he does very little to interrupt this writing style, creating a homogeneous, unbroken mess of nearly identical passages describing the same concept multiple times.The impression I get from this book is that a lot of it can be cut while still preserving the arguments Carnegie wishes to present. It is long-winded, self-important, and annoying to read due to his writing style and the framing of his arguments. The concepts that Carnegie introduces aren't incorrect, but they could be presented more concisely, without the fluff, and would benefit from an expert opinion as opposed to a sea of quotations chosen. I don't need to know who Aristotle or Socrates are to understand that people like hearing their own name, because I already know that I like hearing my name in conversation, and that knowledge is not 2000-years old.There are more modern books, such as 'Honoring The Self' by Nathaniel Branden, which will likely do more to teach people how to conduct themselves in public, exude confidence, and gain the respect of others without parsing through an inflated and outdated text. 'How To Win Friends...' feels as though it was written more for a business and sales applications, and less for personal development.