This was dreadful. Originally published in 1936, How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie remains one of the most popular self help books in print and one of the best-selling books of all time. Despite being decades old when I got around to reading it many moons ago, the core principles were still relevant and I continue to be mindful of these lessons years later.
When I saw that Dale Carnegie & Associates published an audiobook with an update for the digital age in How to Win Friends & Influence People in the Digital Age, I thought it might be worth a listen. Perhaps with the advent of social media and online presences, there'd be a lot of new ground to cover, despite being released more than 10 years ago.
Unfortunately not. This was a disappointing listen with nothing earth shatteringly new or even mildly interesting to add to the Carnegie repertoire of human connection. I just retrieved my foxed and yellowed copy of How to Win Friends & Influence People from my bookshelf to compare chapter headings and what do you know, they're very similar. In this audiobook, Part Three, Chapter 2 is called 'Never Say, You're Wrong'. In the original, Part Three, Chapter 3 is 'If You're Wrong, Admit it'. Hmmm.
With the success of the original I guess it's logical for opportunists to want to cash in on the enterprise but I really wish they wouldn't. Even if I'd read this on the day it was released in 2011 I wouldn't have been impressed. Reading it 11 years after publication left me feeling irritated by how the digital references are noticeably dated. How to Win Friends & Influence People in the Digital Age is a book that has dated very quickly without adding much of consequence to the original, so I couldn't recommend this as having any value for readers today.
Read the original and move on.
