I really was not expecting to like this book so much. The title comes off as smarmy, biasing me to anticipate a book about manipulating people. Instead I find that Carnegie has intentionally titled the book this way to draw readers whose desires are basically manipulative so that he can show them (as it were) a still more excellent way.

Carnegie's prescription essentially boils down to tips and practices for listening to others, entering their perspectives, treating them with respect, and mutually discovering how what you want or have to offer can actually serve their needs. Practical in the extreme, relentlessly anecdotal, and insistent on subordinating the transactional to the relational - even at the risk of sacrificing the transaction altogether for the sake of human connection. Excellent.

My only quibble is that gets a bit repetitive in the second half. Repetition and reinforcement are key to learning, and Carnegie isn't simply rehashing earlier material; but a bit more condensing and combining of principles would concentrate the book's impact.

This book is a guide to life. I think several people should be required to read this book at least once. Teachers, emotional teenagers, employers, employees, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, friends, neighbors, politicians etc...

I truly found this book oddly entertaining. Although it is a self-improvement type book, I couldn't put it down. Through the examples of many famous and successful people throughout history, this book teaches us how to work with others and be nice. I sincerely believed that my ability to effectively communicate and work with other people improved exponentially through reading this book and putting what I learned into action.

I love this book and am going to require that my children read it before they get a job, a drivers' license, or a date.