The Dale Carnegie Institute has re-released “How to Win Friends and Influence People” with “in the Digital Age” appended to the title. New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner isn’t having any of it:
Were Carnegie alive to read this grievous book, he would clutch his chest like Redd Foxx in “Sanford and Son,” smile wanly for a few minutes (he didn’t like to make others feel bad), then keel over into his cornflakes.
The following sentence, which appears on Page 80, is so inept that it may actually be an ancient curse and to read it more than three times aloud is to summon the cannibal undead: “Today’s biggest enemy of lasting influence is the sector of both personal and corporate musing that concerns itself with the art of creating impressions without consulting the science of need ascertainment.”
Dale Carnegie and Emily Post for the Twitter Age – NYTimes.com