How to Win Friends and Influence People Summary & key ideas explained

In 1934, a young executive from the publisher Simon & Schuster signed up for an evening course in New York. His name was Leon Shimkin. The teacher, a former farm boy from Missouri named Dale Carnegie, had been running courses for adults since the years before the First World War, first in public speaking and then in something harder to name: how to get along with people.

Shimkin came away convinced that Carnegie's lessons belonged in a book, and he talked him into writing it. In 1936 How to Win Friends and Influence People came out. It became one of the bestselling books of the century, with more than 30 million copies sold, and it's still read by salespeople, managers, teachers and anyone who has ever lost an argument they were sure they'd won.

Carnegie's claim was simple and a little uncomfortable. Knowing your trade matters, but what lifts people up, at work and at home, is how they deal with others. And dealing with others well is not a gift. It's a set of habits anyone can learn.

The habits sound obvious when you first hear them. Be interested. Remember names. Don't argue. The surprise is how rarely anyone actually does them, and how much changes when you do.

The first habit is the hardest to keep. It starts with a gunfight in Manhattan.