Dale Carnegie used to say that it’s easier to make a million dollars than to add a phrase to the English language. “How to Win Friends and Influence People” has become just such a phrase, quoted, retold, parodied, used with innumerable nuances in texts ranging from political pamphlets to novels. This book has been translated into almost every written language. Each generation rediscovers it and finds in it something in tune with its time.

The above leads us to the logical question: “Why revise a book that has proven and continues to prove its unheard of appeal? Why experiment with success?”

To answer this, we must realize that Dale Carnegie himself tirelessly revised his book throughout his life. It was written as a practical manual for his courses on “Speaking Skills and Human Relationships” and is still used as such today. Up until his death in 1955, Carnegie continually improved and revised the course to adapt it to the changing needs of an ever-expanding audience. It is hard to find a man more sensitive to the changing directions of life today than Dale Carnegie. He constantly revised and improved his teaching methods; he modernized his book on effective conversation several times. Had he lived longer, he himself would have revised How to Win Friends and Influence People to better reflect the changes in the world since the thirties.

The names of many of the people quoted in this book, well known at the time of first publication, are not familiar to most readers today. Some of the examples and phrases in our social age seem quaint and outdated, as if they came from Victorian novels. This weakens the informativeness and overall impact of the book.

Consequently, in revising and supplementing the book, our goal was to make it clearer and closer to the modern reader without distorting the content. We have not changed the essence of the book, but only replaced some examples with more modern ones. Carnegie’s lively, impetuous style has remained intact-even the slang of the thirties has been retained. Dale Carnegie wrote as he spoke, in an expansive, relaxed conversational style.

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