There's no shame in admitting that the only way you know of How to Win Friends and Influence People is from the various times the title has been parodied. With the ever-constant glut of self-help books promising all sorts of cheap tricks to supposedly boost yourself for whatever purpose, the more time proven methods tend to get lost in the mix. How to Win Friends and Influence People is a book whose basic body of text is nearly 80 years old, and despite all the testimony it has received over time, from big American industrialists to Charles Manson, you can't help but stop and wonder if the advice within has aged poorly, consequence of being written for a world long since gone.

The inception of How to Win Friends was a recording of Dale Carnegie's self-help seminars into a book format. Self-help events may be dime-a-dozen today, but Carnegie pioneered in setting up and popularizing some of the very first that got the attention of even the wealthy and powerful. Carnegie's approach was rather unique; rather than setting himself up on a pedestal as the know-all teacher, he took a leaf of advice out of his own writings by empathizing with his audience and allowing them to share their problems for examination.

The results were interesting; people from various walks of life, from salesmen trying to pitch their products, to housewives fed up with their home life, all applied the Carnegie method to their lives and described the change that came through. All the way up until his death, Carnegie's seminars, and How to Win Friends were a runaway success acclaimed by bigname money handlers.

Now for the book: the copy you'll pick up has probably been touched and prodded by the hands of many prying editors since the book's publication, but besides some updated anecdotes, and removing somewhat outdated advice on business letters and marriage, the book that Dale Carnegie published in 1936 is quite there. Subdivided in four sections (or six with the aforementioned eliminated chapters if you've snagged a pre-1981 version that hasn't fallen apart), the book dispels advice on:

- Techniques in handling people

- Making people like you

- Winning people to your point of thinking

- Changing people without causing resentment

While the above seems to suggest some sort of malicious manipulation, Carnegie's advice is anything but. Rather, it suggests something that even decent people forget; getting ahead in life and with people requires a degree of genuine empathy. Besides rather charming 1930's vocabulary and images of railroad tycoons and top-hat-wearing industrialists the book evokes, How to Win Friends has advice centred around the most base of human psychology, that we are creatures of emotion rather than logic, as much as some of us wish we weren't.

Having read this book myself, I can safely say that while it won't immediately fix all your problems, How to Win Friends is highly encouraging of introspection and gradual self-change. The genial warmth of Carnegie's writing style makes the book quite approachable to those wary of self-help books, and the timelessness of the advice and backing scenarios make for easy understanding.

How to Win Friends and Influence People isn't a book about resorting to tricks that will get people doing things your way for the short term. Rather, it's about attaining self-improvement first, so you may approach people while carrying higher sense of emotional intelligence.

Reading Between The Lines explores books that you may have missed out on that are worth your while. If you have a book to suggest, email Eshaan at e_gupta@fanshaweonline.ca.