This one is a classic and I’d say for good reason. A whole lot of the advice sounds like common sense. Yes, good. Sometimes putting the obvious to paper and calling it a book is a good idea. It reinforces what we should already know and probably aren’t doing very well.
I know that I don’t do the stuff in the book nearly enough even though I think it’s mostly common sense. I’d also suspect that a lot of the information wasn’t totally common sense when it was written and only became common sense after this information entered the zeitgeist.
The basic message of the book might as well be “be a kind and tolerant person”. Be interested in people and listen to them. Simple stuff. However, it also has some good ideas I hadn’t really heard before. One was to get someone saying “yes yes” immediately. If you can get them agreeing with you, then they’ll want to keep agreeing with you. If you immediately get into the disagreement, they’re going to get stubborn. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or if you “win” the argument, you’re still going to lose. Yeah, I make that mistake way too much.
It also had some ideas on how to criticize when necessary. Generally, don’t be too direct about it. I’d also suspect the “compliment sandwich” probably started with this book, although it’s missing the last piece of bread.
I’d certainly recommend reading the book. It’s not too long and it’s mostly a bit of advice followed by a few anecdotes for each idea. It’s a very easy read, although the author references a lot of people from the late 1800s and early 1900s that a less educated person might not know. However, I don’t think it’s important to know that much about the characters other than that they are successful people… presidents and business leaders.
Honestly, this book should probably be in school curriculums. Nice short chapters that would be good for discussion. The only thing I question on this book is that it doesn’t address the existence of sociopaths. It assumes the best of people and that they aren’t going to take advantage of your kindness and generosity. If it had an updated version that talked about how to spot out sociopaths and how to deal with them, it would be even better… although I don’t think it’d fit the general feel of the book.
Perhaps a modern rewrite of the book would be in order, but this one is a classic that should be read as is.