Review of 'How To Win Friends & Influence People [Sep 24, 2016] Carnegie, Dale' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
It has a great overview of techniques for non-toxic conversations but it's a little bit dangerous and shallow. I was walking around it for years and was afraid it's a collection of insecure tricks for used car salesmen. But it isn't.
It's easy to read and there's a lot of examples from the lives of famous (and not-so-famous) people. So it's a worthy read even if you just want to entertain yourself.
What do I mean by dangerous? It's very easy to fall into a people-pleaser mentality after reading this. Applied bluntly, advice from this book may lead to flattery and many people despise it.
What do I mean by shallow? It has answers on 'how'-questions, not 'why'. How to make a good first impression? How to criticize and not be hated for it? It's not obvious why Carnegie's answers to those questions actually work. If you're interested, Difficult Conversations provides a nice framework to deal with those whys.
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