How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie)
ISBN 0 7493 0784 6.
One of the oldest and one of the best. It does exactly what it says on the tin: Tells you how to win friends and influence people. And not for Carnegie is the way of being duplicitous, self-obsessed or aggressive as a means to an end. In fact he tells you that going down that road simply does not work. Short, concise chapters on topics such as "How to criticise - and not be hated for it" offer impeccable advice that is impossible to argue with. It is packed with anecdotes, many of which seem more than a little quaint for today, but these stories and the old-fashioned language add up to the feeling you are reading a wee bit of history. And you are. The world has moved on in the eighty or so years since the book was first printed and once finished you will have the impression that an appendix for the 21st century could be added, but the core concepts of this book have spawned a million self-development tomes along the same lines. Read this one before you read the rest.
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