[delbronski]

I too read the book in my younger years, and it helped me a lot with making friends and my career. However, the book itself is filled with some terrible advice for communicating with people. I realized that as an older person. But as a young person it filled me much needed confidence. Like many of these books, the actual advice is crap, but I think it gives people the confidence they need to change something in their lives they are not happy with.

I highly recommend the podcast: If Books Could Kill. They have an episode on this book.

[joshmoody24]

As someone who has listened to this If Books Could Kill episode and read the actual book, I think the podcast is mostly looking for problems where there aren't any. Despite the book's sleazy title ("influence people") it's mostly just basic, innocent social advice.

[delbronski]

The core advice of the book is to smile, flatter, avoid all criticism, and feign “genuine” interest. People can sense this performance from a mile away. It is a dated, salesy, conflict-averse (to the point of dishonesty) way of communicating. It is too surface-level to address real, sustained relationships.