I must confess that I am a little confused after going through this book for two reasons. First of all, I’m confused as to why this book gets all the bad rep about being a tool for manipulating gullible people using lies and deceit, since Carnegie stresses several times that insincere flattery is to be avoided at all costs. What the author suggests is focusing on the positive side of things and bringing a reasonable and understanding point of view to the table, not lying through your teeth to get your way. At the same time, I’m also confused as to why this book is kept in such a high regard by many. I feel that most of the lessons in this book won’t really apply to a large number of readers that, well, have basic manners and try to put themselves in other people's shoes every once in a while.

Here's an example of one of the many stories that compose this book. In it, a middle manager is at the end of his wits because no matter what he does, he can’t get his minions to work as hard as he would like. According to the book (and this is as close to a direct quote as I can get at the moment), he “coaxed, pushed, sworn, cussed, and threatened”, but surprisingly “nothing works, they just won't produce!” “OH NO!” must have thought the poor, distressed middle manager between cracks of his nine-tail whip. “MY LOWLY MINIONS NOT WORK GOOD! WAT DO?” Well, I want to believe that this is an embellishment, if not a straight-up straw man, because surely any reasonable person in this position would, you know, try to actually communicate with their staff instead of resorting to coaxing and threats. Perhaps times have simply changed? I’m not sure. The situations presented in the book and the language used often feel dated, even anachronistic.

On that note, I’m really trying not to doubt the veracity of Mr Carnegie’s stories, but so many of them are pretty difficult to verify (not one but two of the examples are encounters he’s had with mounted policemen in the middle of a forest). In addition, many of these stories contain what look like caricatures of people or situations, and pretty much all the protagonists speak with the same eloquence and determination, independently of their background. In one of the most eyebrow-raising stories, the protagonist, a Completely Normal Person, has an appointment with a Very Important and Busy Person, a situation that seems to come up so often throughout the book that I will just call them CNP and VIaBP for short. The Completely Normal Person is told that he will have only a few minutes for his appointment, since the VIaBP is REALLY, REALLY busy. The CNP then has a stroke of genius and, as soon as he comes into the office, pays an elaborate and honest compliment to his interlocutor’s office. This touches the VIaBP, who admits that he usually doesn’t have the time to admire what his possessions due to all his Scrooge-like, relentless business making, and this evolves into a heartfelt conversation that culminates with our protagonist getting exactly what he came for. Could this technique work? Maybe. Did this happen exactly as described in the book? Perhaps. I can’t tell. But here’s how I could see the conversation going instead:

CNP: *shuffles nervously in*
VIaBP: What do you want?
CNP: You know, my good sir, this is a magnificent office you have here. What I wouldn’t give to be able to work surrounded by these rich, dark woods. It’s truly a testament to your good taste, experience and success.
VIaBP: Yeah, it’s a nice office. What do you want?
CNP: …

Some of these stories end up in such resounding success after the use of some basic manners that one cannot help but think of the whole “and then the whole store clapped” cliché one sees so often on the internet. The author makes a point to detail how many thousands of dollars the newly acquired contract or deal made the CNP, and, I swear I’m not making this up, in one of the cases, the VIaBP actually offers the CNP his own car for a few days!

In another of the anecdotes, a landlord (the good guy in this story) hears from his tenant that he will be moving out in a couple months, independently of the terms detailed in the lease. This represents a clear breach of contract and is, of course, a cause of much distress for the landlord, who decides to forsake all his legal leverage in this situation in favor of a good old appeal to the tenant’s honor. And so, instead of demanding the money that he’s legally entitled to through the usual legal channels, he writes a letter to his tenant stating that he has no doubt that the tenant won’t follow through with his threat of breaking the lease because he’s a person of honor, and that he knows he will keep his word and stay in the apartment. And lo and behold, the date comes, and independently of the urgent, pressing reasons that were pushing the tenant to break the law and leave his apartment before the end of the contract (a sick relative? a job opportunity in another city? a pure, insatiable sense of wanderlust?), the tenant decides to stay in the property, presumably because his honor was on the line. Again, did this happen verbatim? I can’t say. What I can say, however, is that if we could fix all our problems with honest appeals to reason, we wouldn’t need a legal system to begin with.

Even though I found some of the stories in this book heavy-handed, that’s not to say that all the lessons it offers are not valuable, or that it’s completely useless. At the very least, the anecdotes are told in an entertaining way, the moral of each story is unquestionably helpful, and some techniques are interesting (side note: I still think that using the other person’s name in a conversation helps not because the sound of our name is the most important sound for us on an unconscious level, but because it shows that we care enough about our interlocutor to learn something relatively trivial). However, readers should keep in mind that this book is not a grimoire full of spells that will bend other human’s will to yours. It contains a few basic tips to maintain better relationships with other people, but from what I've been able to gather, it all boils to “don’t be a jerk”. If you feel this could be useful for you, it probably will, but I can say that it didn’t quite make too much of an impression on me.