How to Win Friends and Influence People

Last updated

How to Win Friends and Influence People
How-to-win-friends-and-influence-people.jpg
First edition, 11th printing (February 1937)
Author Dale Carnegie
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Subject Self-help
Publisher Simon & Schuster
Publication date
October 1936
Media typePrint (hardcover / paperback)
Pages291 pp
ISBN 1-4391-6734-6
OCLC 40137494

How to Win Friends and Influence People is a 1936 self-help book written by Dale Carnegie. Over 30 million copies have been sold worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time. [1] [2]

Contents

Carnegie had been conducting business education courses in New York since 1912. [3] In 1934, Leon Shimkin, of the publishing firm Simon & Schuster, took one of Carnegie's 14-week courses on human relations and public speaking, and later persuaded Carnegie to let a stenographer take notes from the course to be revised for publication. [3] The initial five thousand copies of the book sold exceptionally well, going through 17 editions in its first year alone. [3]

In 1981, a revised edition containing updated language and anecdotes was released. [4] The revised edition reduced the number of sections from six to four, eliminating sections on effective business letters and improving marital satisfaction. In 2011, it was number 19 on Time 's list of the 100 most influential books. [5]

Contents

The 1981 edition of How to Win Friends and Influence People is broken into the following parts: "Twelve Things This Book Will Do For You", "Fundamental Techniques in Handling People", "Twelve Ways to Win People to Your Way of Thinking", and "Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment". The 1936 edition also contained "Letters That Produced Miraculous Results" and "Seven Rules for Making Your Home Life Happier".[ citation needed ]

Since the original release, examples and stories used in the books were adjusted to remain more relevant. Newer editions have only 4 parts to the book, including "Fundamental Techniques in Handling People", "Six Ways to Make People Like You", "How to Win People to Your way of Thinking", and "Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment". [6]

Origins

Before How to Win Friends and Influence People was released, the genre of self-help books had an ample heritage.[ citation needed ] Authors such as Orison Swett Marden and Samuel Smiles had enormous success with their self-help books in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.[ citation needed ]

Dale Carnegie began his career teaching night classes at a YMCA in New York,[ clarification needed ] later expanding to YMCAs in Philadelphia and Baltimore. [7] He then taught independently at hotels in London, Paris, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore,[ citation needed ] writing small booklets to go along with his courses. [8] After one of his 14-week courses, he was approached by publisher Leon Shimkin of the publishing house Simon & Schuster. [9] Shimkin urged Carnegie to write a book, but he was not initially persuaded. Shimkin then hired a stenographer to type up what he heard in one of Carnegie's long lectures and presented the transcript to Carnegie, [10] who edited and revised it into a final form. [11]

To market the book, Shimkin sent 500 copies of the book to former graduates of the Dale Carnegie Course, with a note that pointed out the utility of the book for refreshing students with the advice they had learned. [12] : 141  The 500 mailed copies brought orders for over 5,000 more copies of the book and Simon & Schuster had to increase the original print order of 1,200 quickly. [12] : 142  Shimkin also ran a full-page ad in the New York Times complete with quotes by Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller on the importance of human relations. [13]

Originally published in November 1936, the book reached the New York Times best-seller list by the end of the year, and did not fall off for the next two years. [12] : 141  Simon & Schuster continued to advertise the book relying heavily on testimonials as well as the testable approach the book offered. [13]

Reception

How to Win Friends and Influence People became one of the most successful books in American history. It went through 17 print editions in its first year of publishing and sold 250,000 copies in the first three months. The book has sold over 30 million copies worldwide since and annually sells in excess of 250,000 copies. [14] A 2013 Library of Congress survey ranked Carnegie's volume as the seventh most influential book in American history. [15]

How to Win Friends and Influence People was number eight on the list of "Top Check Outs Of All Time" by the New York Public Library. [16]

After How to Win Friends and Influence People was published in November 1936 and ascended rapidly on best-seller lists, the New York Times reviewed it in February 1937. They offered a balanced criticism, arguing that Carnegie indeed offered insightful advice in dealing with people, but that his wisdom was extremely simple and should not overrule the foundation of actual knowledge. [17]

The satirical writer Sinclair Lewis waited a year to offer his scathing critique. He described Carnegie's method as teaching people to "smile and bob and pretend to be interested in other people's hobbies precisely so that you may screw things out of them." [18] [19] However, despite the criticism, sales continued to soar and the book was talked about and reviewed as it rapidly became mainstream.

Scholarly critique was little and oscillated over time. Due to the book's lay appeal, it was not significantly discussed in academic journals. In the early stages of the book's life, the few scholarly reviews that were written explained the contents of the book and attempted to describe what made the book popular. [20] [ original research? ] As time passed, however, scholarly reviews became more critical, chiding Carnegie for being insincere and manipulative. [21] [ original research? ]

How to Win Friends and Influence People was written for a popular audience and Carnegie successfully captured the attention of his target. The book experienced mass consumption and appeared in many popular periodicals, including garnering 10 pages in the January 1937 edition of Reader's Digest . [22]

The book continued to remain at the top of best-seller lists and was even noted in the New York Times to have been extremely successful in Nazi Germany, much to the writer's bewilderment. It was written that Carnegie would rate "butter higher than guns as a means of winning friends" something "diametrically opposite to the official German view." [23]

Carnegie described his book as an "action-book" but it is today categorized as one of the first in the self-help genre. Almost every self-help book since has borrowed some type of style or form from Carnegie's "path-breaking best seller." [24]

Legacy

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Self-help</span> Self-guided improvement

Self-help or self-improvement is a self-directed improvement of oneself—economically, physically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dale Carnegie</span> American writer and lecturer (1888–1955)

Dale Carnegie was an American writer and lecturer, and the developer of courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. Born into poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), a bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), Lincoln the Unknown (1932), and several other books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Napoleon Hill</span> American author

Oliver Napoleon Hill was an American self-help author and conman. He is best known for his book Think and Grow Rich (1937), which is among the best-selling self-help books of all time. Hill's works insisted that fervid expectations are essential to improving one's life. Most of his books were promoted as expounding principles to achieve "success".

<i>Think and Grow Rich</i> 1937 book by Napoleon Hill

Think and Grow Rich is a book written by Napoleon Hill and Rosa Lee Beeland released in 1937 and promoted as a personal development and self-improvement book. He claimed to be inspired by a suggestion from business magnate and later-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. However, there is no evidence that the two ever met.

Robert Beno Cialdini is an American psychologist. He is the Regents' Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and was a visiting professor of marketing, business and psychology at Stanford University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pocket Books</span> American publisher

Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon & Schuster</span> American publishing company

Simon & Schuster LLC is an American publishing company owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers. As of 2017 Simon & Schuster was the third largest publisher in the United States, publishing 2,000 titles annually under 35 different imprints.

Public Speaking and Influencing Men In Business (ISBN 0-7661-6973-1) is a 1937 revision of Dale Carnegie's 1926 book Public Speaking: a Practical Course for Business Men. Dorothy Carnegie produced 2 separate revised editions: How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking (1956), aimed at the general public, and The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking (1962), as a replacement textbook for the Dale Carnegie Course. A more recent revised edition is Public Speaking for Success (2005), revised by Arthur Pell, which restores content that was left out of the Dorothy Carnegie-revised works.

<i>Private Parts</i> (book) Book by American radio host Howard Stern

Private Parts is the first book by American radio personality Howard Stern. It was released on October 7, 1993 by Simon & Schuster and edited by Larry "Ratso" Sloman and Judith Regan. By mid-1992, Stern's radio show The Howard Stern Show had become the number one morning program in New York City and had hosted the Saturday night television show The Howard Stern Show on WWOR-TV, since 1990. After development on a feature film for New Line Cinema fell through, Stern secured a deal with Simon & Schuster in early 1993 to write a book.

<i>The Magic of Thinking Big</i>

The Magic of Thinking Big, first published in 1959, is a self-help book by David J. Schwartz. An abridged version was published in 1987.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vash Young</span>

Vash Young was an American author of motivational and self-improvement books with a popular following during the Great Depression. His writings, especially his last book Fortunes for All reveal much of his early life.

Threshold Editions is an imprint of book publisher Simon & Schuster, a division of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, specializing in conservative non-fiction. The imprint was co-founded by Mary Matalin, serving as its first editor-in-chief, and Louise Burke, who served as publisher until 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leon Shimkin</span> American businessman

Leon Shimkin was an American businessman who helped to build Simon & Schuster into a major publishing company. Shimkin was responsible for many self-help bestsellers turning Dale Carnegie's lectures into the bestselling book How to Win Friends and Influence People and J.K. Lasser's tax books. Shimkin co-founded Pocket Books and was a pioneer by distributing mass market paperbacks through newsstands and drugstores. Shimkin became the third partner to Simon & Schuster's Max Schuster and Richard L. Simon and remained as an executive after Simon & Schuster was sold to Field Enterprises, Inc. in 1944. Shimkin rose to become chairman of the board and owner of Simon & Schuster until he sold it to Gulf + Western in 1975.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bibliography of Donald Trump</span>

This bibliography of Donald Trump is a list of written and published works, by and about Donald Trump. Due to the sheer volume of books about Trump, the titles listed here are limited to non-fiction books about Trump or his presidency, published by notable authors and scholars. Tertiary sources, satire, and self-published books are excluded.

Max Lincoln Schuster was an American book publisher and the co-founder of the publishing company Simon & Schuster. Schuster was instrumental in the creation of Pocket Books, and the mass paperback industry, along with Richard L. Simon, Robert F. DeGraff and Leon Shimkin. Schuster published many famous works of history and philosophy including the Story of Civilization series of books by Will Durant and Ariel Durant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jason Reynolds</span> American young adult novelist

Jason Reynolds is an American author of novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade audience. Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in neighboring Oxon Hill, Maryland, Reynolds found inspiration in rap and had an early focus on poetry, publishing several poetry collections before his first novel in 2014, When I Was The Greatest, which won the John Steptoe Award for New Talent.

As of 2018, several firms in the United States rank among the world's biggest publishers of books in terms of revenue: Cengage Learning, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill Education, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, and Wiley.

Jacob Kay Lasser was an American accountant who wrote the best selling book Your Income Tax. Max Schuster, Lasser's publisher, said "Lasser is to taxation what Einstein is to relativity."

William Livingston Larned was an American author and poet. He is known for his works "Father Forgets" and "Advertisement Illustration". In 1909, he penned a poem titled "Florida's State Flower" to commemorate the designation of the orange blossom as the official state flower of Florida.

Dorothy Carnegie was an American writer. She was the wife of writer and lecturer Dale Carnegie. Following her husband's demise, she assumed his position as the leader of the self-improvement empire bearing his name. Additionally, she established herself as an author, penning works like Dale Carnegie's Scrapbook and Guiding Your Spouse Towards Success.

References

  1. ↑ Garner, Dwight (October 5, 2011). "Classic Advice: Please, Leave Well Enough Alone". The New York Times.
  2. ↑ "'How to Win Friends and Influence People' is now targeting Gen Z girls". New York Post. August 8, 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 Carnegie, Dale (2006). How to win friends & influence people. UK: Vermilion. pp. 12–18. ISBN   978-1409005216.
  4. ↑ Walters, Ray (September 5, 1982). "Paperback Talk". New York Times. Archived from the original on December 8, 2008. Retrieved April 7, 2008.
  5. ↑ "How to Win Friends and Influence People". time.com. 2011. Retrieved March 2, 2021.
  6. ↑ HubSpot. "Summary: How to Win Friends & Influence People". www.hubspot.com. Retrieved October 17, 2023.
  7. ↑ Lowell Thomas, Shortcut to Distinction Introduction to How to Win Friends and Influence People. (New York: Gallery, 1998) 103.
  8. ↑ Steven Watts, Self-Help Messiah (New York: Other, 2013)
  9. ↑ Korda, Michael (1999). Another Life: A Memoir of Other People. Random House. pp.  149. ISBN   9780679456599. It was not for nothing that Shimkin had been the discoverer of Dale Carnegie, whose lectures he had attended with results that changed both Carnegie's life and his own: How to Win Friends and Influence People became the biggest best-seller in S&S's history.
  10. ↑ Silverman, Al (2008). The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors, and Authors. Truman Talley. pp. 252–254. ISBN   978-0312-35003-1.
  11. ↑ Giles, Kemp. Dale Carnegie (New York: St. Martin's, 1989) 137–141
  12. 1 2 3 Giles, Kemp. Dale Carnegie (New York: St. Martin's, 1989)
  13. 1 2 "Display ad 42 – no title". New York Times. December 7, 1936. ProQuest   101624338.
  14. ↑ McDowell, Edwin (October 25, 1986). "Reluctant Dale Carnegie's 50-Year-Old classic". The New York Times. Irwyn Applebaum, president of Pocket Books, Simon & Schuster's mass-market arm, cited that sales of the book had been over one million between 1982 and 1986
  15. ↑ Steven Watts, Self-Help Messiah (New York: Other, 2013) 2–4
  16. ↑ Carlson, Jen (January 13, 2020). "These Are The NYPL's Top Check Outs Of All Time". Gothamist.
  17. ↑ "Miscellaneous Brief Reviews". New York Times. February 14, 1937. p. 104. ProQuest   101971502 . Retrieved February 29, 2024.
  18. ↑ Sinclair Lewis, quoted in Tom Sant, The Giants of Sales. (New York: AMACOM, 2006) 96.
  19. ↑ Giles, Kemp. Dale Carnegie (New York: St. Martin's, 1989) 152.
  20. ↑ Symons, A. E. 1937. The Australian Quarterly, 9 (3). Australian Institute of Policy and Science: 115–16. doi : 10.2307/20629470
  21. ↑ Parker, Gail Thain. 1977. "How to Win Friends and Influence People: Dale Carnegie and the Problem of Sincerity". American Quarterly 29 (5). Johns Hopkins University Press: 506–18. doi : 10.2307/2712571
  22. ↑ "Display ad 49 – no title". New York Times. January 25, 1937. ProQuest   102017737.
  23. ↑ "Books and Authors". New York Times. December 29, 1940. p. 1. ProQuest   105230738.
  24. ↑ Giles, Kemp. Dale Carnegie (New York: St. Martin's, 1989) 147.
  25. ↑ Lasson, Sally Ann (February 16, 2009). "Warren Buffet: The secret of the billionaire's success". The Independent . Archived from the original on April 1, 2013. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
  26. ↑ "75-year history of Broadway Elementary building celebrated". Denison Bulletin-Review. March 20, 2012. Retrieved April 9, 2017.
  27. ↑ Brady, Diane (July 22, 2013). "Charles Manson's turning point: Dale Carnegie classes". Business Week . Archived from the original on September 25, 2013. Retrieved October 23, 2013.
  28. ↑ "New film recounts kidnapping of LDS missionaries". KOMO. Associated Press. October 25, 2013. Retrieved December 8, 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.