This book has worked it's way into the mainstream's consciousness.  Some may not know that it's a book but nearly everyone is familiar with the title. At 75 years old, it has sold over 15 million copies world wide and counting.  So what has made it stand the test of time? What lessons are in this book that are still relevant today, as relevant as they were 75 years ago?

For the twenty years prior to writing this book, Dale Carnegie was what we would refer to in this day-and-age, a motivational speaker. He gave business courses for professionals on effective speaking.  What he discovered was that these professionals from a wide range of occupations, were learning how to speak effectively but this meant nothing when they didn't know how to interact properly with other people. He also found that this skill was well sought after.  Because there was no such course or book available to help people, he developed it for his use in conjunction with his lectures.  And a self-help phenomenon was born.

The book itself is broken down into four main sections;

1. Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
2. Six Ways to Make People Like You
3. How to Win People to your Way of Thinking
4. Be a Leader: How to Change People Without giving offense or Arousing Resentment

This book is in no way about learning to manipulate people into doing and thinking the way you do.  It's underlying message is to be sincere and considerate in your dealings with other people.  Carnegie undertook a huge amount of research to try and truly understand the nature of human interaction and found at it's core that this idea of consideration, of empathy, of just plain kindness was the grease that oiled the cogs of human relationships.  To back up this research, he spoke with and read the biographies of truly great people and has included many of these quotes and anecdotal stories from his own experience and from those he read.

When recommended this book, I thought I didn't need it.  I have never struggled to make friends or suffered in work environments from clashes with colleagues.  But this book has offered so much more.  It speaks of more than business relationships; the basic tenets of kindness and sincerity apply to all human relationships, including parent-child, brother-sister, friend-friend.  It is easy to be cynical about something so often quoted and spoken of, of something that should be human nature itself. The book is as geniune and earnest in itself as it advises it's readers to be.  Highly recommended.