Eli Bendersky's website Carnegie's "How to stop worrying and start living" is one of my favorite books. So I decided to read this one, hoping to see Carnegie's energetic style applied to the all-too-important problem of how to communicate with people efficiently.
My impression of this book is double edged. On one hand, the advice given within is sound, interesting and very relevant. Without doubt, even thinking about applying the techniques Carnegie lists can make you better with people. The fact that this book was written in the 30-ies doesn't change much - human relations stayed pretty much the same.
Reading some of the advices I could actually feel how I did certain things wrong, and how they could have been done better. Most of this stuff already presides somewhere in your subconscience, fed by years of experience in dealing with people, but it's nice to have it all printed out.
On the other hand, this book is too "hypy" (by that I mean too much hype) - some topics are repeated twice or more, and the style is somewhat salesman-ish, which I didn't like. It reminds some of the modern "books" by pumpers of self-help material that ride on an idea and manage to produce thousands of pages of needless reiteration of the same basic principles.
Additionally, this book doesn't give enough "why"s. Why these things are supposed to work ? I don't mean there are no whys at all. Where they are, the advice is much more credible and interesting to read.
This book could be easily cut to 100 pages or less, I think. And still, the information contained inside is important !