Dale Carnegie's book is full of techniques that — applied incorrectly — will make you come across to other people like a used car salesman. If you can dig deep inside yourself and use these techniques with real sincerity, then they could quite possibly improve your ability to relate to, and to influence, other people. I set out to read it because I'm too shy for my own good in social situations.

The book is broken into four major sections: Fundamental Techniques in Handling People, Six Ways to Make People Like You, How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking, and Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment. Each section offers a handful of ideas backed up with dozens of examples. Unfortunately, many of the examples are outdated; people just don't interact in 2003 the way they did in 1937 when the book was first published. Many other examples are too free in their interpretation of causality; I wasn't convinced that the use of the Carnegie's techniques really caused the situation to turn out the way it did. I finished the book thinking that Dale Carnegie was a bit too much a used-car salesman for my taste.