This book, originally written in 1937, is a classic in terms of how to handle people in your social or business life. Dale Carnegie, author of the book, has a writing style that is especially nice and easy to read. For comparison’s sake, I’m in the middle of reading a book written about 6 months ago right now (review coming soon) and it’s damn near torture to get through each paragraph. The story is alright, but the writing style – bleh!
Carnegie offers a series of “lists” and ideas on how to handle everything from a pissed off client to a client who doesn’t pay his bills to someone who you WANT to be a client, but just won’t jump on board. One of the best parts about Carnegie’s methods is that he provides real examples for his readers to look at as well as testimonials from folks who’ve taken his course (Carnegie taught these methods in a course in the earlier part of the 20th Century).
I also admire Carnegie’s focus on what is important in each lesson. You can tell that he’s not writing this book just to get some money or just to get it out there; he writes with a purpose. If he comes across something that he feels everyone reading should especially be reminded of, he re-writes it, italicizes it, and tells you, “Hey – pay attention to this point!” Again, that’s something that is not only missing from today’s similar books, but something that is equally all-too-frequently absent from many of today’s classrooms.
No one could talk about this book and not give their own story, so here’s a brief one from me. I read this book and it told me many things that I already knew. Think of problems (or what may seem to be a problem) from the other person’s point of view; smile when you’re on the telephone – it’ll make your conversation nicer; always accept blame first, etc. Well, i decided to just try that smiling on the telephone bit and you know what? It really works. What actually caught my attention more than just the smiling was the amount of times that I’d answer the phone and actually grimace because I didn’t feel like being bothered.
This happened to tie in neatly with a homily that my priest gave at Church a few weeks ago where the point was to go out and live life as opposed to just existing. I think that I’ve done a heck of a job at living life (so far), but I found it odd that whenever a phone call came in with a new opportunity to go out or a new possibility to go do something or even if it was someone from work asking a question or a favor, I would immediately grimace.
So I’m going to try to stop doing that so much! Of course, if I don’t like you to begin with – I’m still going to not like talking to you…but then again, you probably won’t call anyway!
Overall, I give this book an extremely high rating. It’s rare that I read any self-help type of books because I’m completely kick ass, but this book had more than the generic “be nice” angle in it. It had more than the “take responsibility for your own actions” stuff, too. It gave real examples of how to deal with real life situations (many of which you can probably relate to). I highly recommend reading this book – and if you do, let me know what you think!
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