Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion 20140420

Book. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming today. Thankall. That was Alvin Townley on booktv. For more information, visit the authors web site, alvintownley. Com. Steven watts talks about the life and Lasting Impact of Dale Carnegie, author of how to win friends and influence people and other books. How to win was name the seventh most influential book in American History by the library of congress. This is 45 minutes. So, tonight were really lucky to have steven watts back. Steven watts has been called by another good buyographyer, robert westbrook, the plutarc of modern america because of his books on walt disney, hugh hefner, and henry ford, and now Dale Carnegie. A professor of history at the university of missouri, former chair of the department at and kale carnegie i give a lecture that i give i give it every year and a half the title is missouri the center of the literary universe and we talk about turn s. Eliot and mark twain and the bestselling cookbook written in st. Louis. I like to refer to the first sentence as the greatest sentence in american literature. Stand facing the stove. But also as part of the lecture i always tell people that one of the the greatest selfhelp book ever wherein was written by a missourian who always identified him as a missourian and thats Dale Carnegie. Born in a small town in northwest missouri and is buried in an increasingly not so small town of belton just to the south of us, part of our suburbs. Dale carnegie was a true missourian, and walt disney a true missourian, and jesse james, true missourian. They were all in one way or another into selffulfillment, and steven watts writes this wonderful genealogy, starts with Benjamin Franklin and moves through purveyors of self develop who were so port in American Culture, and comes to dig Dale Carnegie, and ends the book with oprah winfrey. You think about the direction that the destiny of selfdevelopment goes from selfcontrol, with Benjamin Franklin to selfesteem, with open practice oprah winfrey, with this deep stop with Dale Carnegie. This is a powerful book that is really not just a biography of Dale Carnegie. Its a biography of the emotional develop of the United States, and its not all necessarily good. But as steven watts will tell you, its all really nice. Ladies and gentlemen, steven watts. [applause] i just told crosby he is a hard act to follow here. Dale carnegie would be proud, i think. You have to excuse me. I have had a terrible cold so i may begin croaking like a frog so pretend at it natural. Ever since Rob Westbrook wrote that think in my book i have been giving any talks dressed in a toga, but my legs arent good enough so i got the suit instead today. I want to talk about my book about Dale Carnegie, very influenceal figure in this country, and if you have the book ill sign it for you afterwards. The notion of success, i think, lay at the heart of the american dream. And in fact the idea of the individual moving ahead in the race of life, pulling yourself up by your own bootstrapsas the old saying has it, its imbedded in our national dna. All of us have heard some version of go make something of yourself, go make something out of yourself. Usually from anxious parents during our adolescence, when were preparing to good off to college, and actually from the founding days of the republic, boosters, and moralists, politicians, shysters although i risk re done dance si on redundancy. Theyve been instructing people how to improve social status and increase material possessions which are the two big parts of the success formula. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin actually i have some slides, if this works. There we go. Benjamin franklin was the first success writer in history, Poor Richards almanac, and then of course in this autobiography which was eventually published later in he 1700s. Franklin stressed the work ethic and thrift. And in particular the ways to success, all the sayings most of you have hear, early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise, penny saved is a penny earnedon and on. A few decades later in the 19th center, horatio algier became the great avatar of success the avatar of success in a series of novemberles that were literary trainwrecks, but culturally i think theyre gems. Really interesting cultural documents. Many bestselling books, mark the match boy, strive to succeed, all of them with very similar titles, essentially algier told the same story over and over and over again. Just changed the characters a little bit. The story was a virtuous young man, an orphan, came from the countryside to the big city and climbed to success, rose to distinction through upstanding character, selfdenial, and unstinting labor. And for victorian individuals, until about the end of the 19th century, algiers directives were a cultural gospel. What about the modern era . Who has been the great avatar of success writing in the American Century as its termed . Well, it happens to be a missourian from the northwestern part of the state. I was born up near maryville, who rose to become the greatest purveyor of success principles in modern life and whose efforts inspired a hoard of disciples who have followed in his wake. That is, of course, Dale Carnegie, the subject of my talk and of my biography in one sense, this book, which is still one of the bestselling books in American History some people rank it among the top three or four bestselling nonfiction books still in our collective lives. Certain sense carnegie in this book operated in tradition of franklin and algier, but as well see here, he also recast their instructions to reflect many of the issues and conditions that would work in modern life. How to win friends and influence people in fact i argue is the kind of brilliant reflection of deeper values that americans have comp come to embrace in the 20th century. Carnegie, i was shocked to discover, never had a fullscale biography, and so explaining his work is sort of the burden of my book, selfhelp messiah which came out in october. This book is absolutely essential reading for everyone who did not want to be an abject miserable failure in modern america and get ahead. It also, along those lines, making a wonderful inspirational gift for graduations, bar mitzvahs, weddings, showers, national holidays, major world religions, et cetera, et cetera. That paragraph was written by my publisher, actually. At any rate, carnegie offers a fascinating story of rags to riches in his own life. He was born, as i noted before, near maryville, missouri, into a youth of sort of grinding poverty, and he spent a youth that was equally influenced on the one hand by his fathers repeated failures as a farmer in the late 19th century, and on the other hand by his mothers intense protestant pieosy. Dale is the little guy in front. Thats his older brother behind him, clifton, young Dale Carnegie was very bright, very intellectually curious, and found a kind of escape from his boyhood of youthful poverty by developing a talent for public speaking. His mother was something of a lay preacher in that part of the state insuring this period, and dale goes off to college at lawrenceburg, State Teachers College at lawrence burg, and becomes a big machine on campus as a public speaker, an orator. He was slight and had big ears and was selfconscious about his ears, and discovered the only way to compete with the Football Player goose be an orator in the late 19th century and thats where he made his mark. Then things got interesting. Very ambitious, very tired of the midwest, and was sort of grating against the religious heritage of his family, particularly his mother, and the warranted to make it. He wanted to get ahead. And he headed off to new york to make good the old saying, of course, was, go west young man. Of course, car anything go carnegie went east to make his fortune. Success did not come immediately with Dale Carnegie. He went through a kind of lengthy roustabout period where he struggled through a series of jobs. He was a meat salesman, an actor, car salesman, magazine journalist, a failed novelist, and even entered into a kind of partnership i found this quite interesting with lowle thomas, the famest writer and journalist in the lawrence of arabia shows lowle put together, carnegie became his righthand man and was very involved in putting on the shows, both in england and the United States. After all of this, carnegie comes back to new york and settles into a kind of solid career as an instructor of public speaking. And he began his efforts at the ymca ymca in brooklyn, part time, seeking a small number of students through the teens and the 1920s, and he steadily refined his techniques and refined his course and he began to establish a national reputation. By about 1930 or so, his public speaking course, the famous carnegie course, is so popular that thousands and thousands of people are attending it all up and down the east coast, and in addition, its attracting some of the Biggest Companies in the United States who are beginning to send their people there to be trained in public speaking by Dale Carnegie, who focused on things like building confidence, and social skills, and personal image. As his career begins to take off, he is begins to appear in newspapers all over the country, begins something of a minor celebrity in American Life, and eventually lands his first big gig on nbc radio, where he is given a show which runs for a couple of years, out of new york. He also writes a very, i guess i would call it, inspirational biography of Abraham Lincoln that sells fairly well, and then he wrote a very chatty kind of book that encapsulated a lot of his radio pieces called little known facts about welsh known people. So carnegie is doing pretty well in this period up into the early 30s. It was in the mid30s, however, that carnegie in a way gets his big break. In the heart of the great depression, period when he becomes a cultural icon for the fir time, man lamed leon, who was an Acquisitions Editor at simon schuster, and would go on to a career as the head of simon simon schuster, and the takes car anything goods course and decides it needs a broader audience and can convinces carnegie to write a book. Carnegie is reluctant. He had submitted some book manuscripts to sigh nonand simon and schuster. They turned him down and he was disgruntled by that. But carnegie bends to the task, and in december of 1936, he publishes a book called, how to win friends and influence people. Now, when this book came out and was being put together, i think both carnegie and the press had fairly modest hopes for itself sales. They hoped that it would sell a reasonable amount of copies, and everyone would make a little bit of money and good home happy. But the resultsre astonishing, and they quickly just sort of overwhelmed the expectations of everyone involved. Copies began to fly off the shelves. Everywhere in the United States. And four months after its release, a stunned leon wrote this letter to carnegie in which he said, and i quote i found this in the carnegie archivesif one year ago a friend of mine were to have told me that today i was going to send to an author the 250,000th copy of his book four months i would have referred him to the nearess psychiatrist or to Robert Ripley for a believe it or not cartoon. End quote. How to win friends would good on to sell about a million copies in the first year, year and a half, and eventually, by the time the dust settled its been estimated the book has sold somewhere in the vicinity of 30 million copies in the United States around the globe, and it has joined, i think, select group of books in American History that have combined enormous popularity with a kind of genuine cultural influence. Joins books like the bible, uncle toms cabin, gone with the wind, the kinsey report and 50 shades of gray. The big question, i think, is why was the book to popular. What happened in the culture that made it so responsive to what carnegie had to say . Well in broadest sense what i argue in this book is that carnegie presented a formula for success in how to win friends and influence people that was particularly attuned to some key qualities in modern American Life and the 20th century. It was aimed, i think, very shrewdly at the legions of new white collar workers in modern america, people in the middle class, who were working in the hundreds of Big Companies and complex bureaucracies that had emerged in business, government, education, media, and entertainment as well, over the early decades of the 1900s. There was in america a very large army of clerks and Office Workers and middle managers, saysmen, advertisers, marketers, teachers, salaried employees of all kinds, and these are people who wanted to succeed but were people for whom the old advice of Benjamin Franklin and horatio algier had a very limited appeal, and a very sort of limited use in their everyday lives. The franklin and algier advice about hard work, firm moral character, prudential habits of saving and thrift, all of this, i think, seemed irrelevant in many ways in this new society where, in peoples daily lives, in bureaucratic settings, they were involved in interactions on a daily basis with dozens and maybe even hundreds of people over and over again. The old standard of hearty individualism just did not do much for them. In this new environment. Carnegies book, how to win friends dressed the situation directly and printed an irresistible messaging that people responded to very enthuseaticly, and that messaging was, quite simply, one could find success in the modern world by developing attractive personal traits, by developing and displaying selfconfidence, by developing skills in human relations, and, most simply, as carnegie would put it, by getting people to like you. That was the game. Carnegie insisted, and as some of you may know if you have head this book insists over and over again that getting ahead in life, securing a better job, making more money, enjoying the esteem of your coworkers and so on, all but all of this was mainly a matter now, in the 20th century, of enhancing your personal aattractiveness and with perky enthusism, and car anything gay was nothing if not perky. He promised his advice book would help any individual, his words, to get out of a mental rut to think new thoughts. Acquire new visions. Acquire new amibitions, win people to your way of thinking, increase your influence, ability to get things done, win new clients, new customers, handle complaints, avoid arguments, keep your human contacts smooth and pleasant, end quote. So, what was the significance of this new success creed that carnegie shapes in this book . Well, first of all, what i would suggest to you i think this is very, very important what carnegies message embodied was a very significant shift in American Culture from character to personality, as i often tell my students in courses. In the victorian age in the 1800s, the standard was one of stern morality, selfcontrol, the character ethic, as the victorians liked to call it and thats what regulated individual contact. But what you have in the 20th 20th century, i think, increasingly, is this vast socioeconomic change that really remade american society, the American Economy, and American Culture, in significant fashion. What you have is a new kind of america that takes shape, that is increasingly devoted to consumer abundance, to bureaucratic definitions of work to leisure and entertain. As key activities in our lives, and in this world, the old idea of victorian selfdenial seemed antiquated. Completely out of touch. What you see here is that the old strictures of character began to recede into the background, and instead knew sparkling images of personality gap to take its began to take its place and became central to a new code of individualism. You have a new notion another work here of the shaping of the healthy, magnetic, charismatic personal image, rather than the internalizedth think of old fogeys and this personality is crucial to your success in the new world of selffulfillment and bureaucracy in a consumer economy. In how to win friends and influence people carnegie captured all of this beautifully, and in the book, he lays out these knew principles of personality in what would become his trademark, breathless, anecdotal style, and he makes this book, i think, really the did guide book for success in modern American Culture. In words im pretty convince weed have horrified a victorian audience only 20, 30, 40 years before, he declares in this become and i quote one can no longer put much faith in the old adage that hard work alone is the magic key that will unlock the door to our desires. Instead he insists its the ability to handle people with your personality and he repeats this over and over again in the book that it is the key to achievement of status, material prosperity, in modern society. Success in america, carnegie tells his readers over and over again, depends on getting along with other people, working smoothly with others in a kind of bureaucratic mile milieu, and suddenly assuming leadership in groups of people and he tailors this advice to those kind of principles, and these are all his principles and his phrases, and im just going to recite a few of them. I think youll see what i mean. Make the other person feel important. Dont criticize others. Establish a positive atmosphere and avoid arguments. Be hearty and lavish in praise. Let the other feel la feel the idea is his, and, finally, the icing on the cake, make people like you. End quote. Well, two this end, he encourages success seekers, i think, in the book to engage in selfexamination. This is an old habit of the American Culture, the victorians did this, the puritans before them. You need to look inward to make sure youre on the straight and narrow path. What is different with carnegies injunctions along these lines is they change shape dramatically. The puritans and victorians said, look into yourself to examine your character flaws to examine your spiritual failings, failings in moriality as a human being. Carnegie has a very different idea. He tells readers to ken a file, like the one he did and at it right there in the carnegie archives called, and i quote, damn fool things i have done, end quote. And what is fascinating about it is all these injunctions to selfexamination, anywherery a word about spiritual failings or moral falling back, anything of the kind, and instead the whole focus is on social errors, and the damn fool things i have done in carnegies rendering is to figure get peoples names to blurt out negative comments to talk too much around other people, to fail to make other people feel comfortable, to argue with people instead of tactfully suggesting new ways of thinking about things, to overlook other peoples viewpoints and not listen to them, and to make sweeping statements that other people found irritable. Those were all damn fool things i have done, and carnegie urged people to sort of wipe those out of ones personality. Pardon me. Heres where the frog part comes in, i think. With carnegie, in other words, what i would suggest excuse me what i would suggest is that you can see American Values shifting from the old notion of inner moral character to shaping ones image and the impressions you make upon other people in a kind of modern setting. So, from character to personality, i think thats one big source of significance. Secondly, i think in addition to that shift, what you all see also see in how to win friends and influence people is a newfound emphasis historically on psychology as a key dynamic in modern American Life. As a number of critics and historians have observed over the last 30 or 40 years, probably, and probably the most famously phillip reid in a book called the triumph of the therapeutic, they suggest that in the modern world, she erosion of connections among people, community ties, religious obligations and so on, produced in the modern west, particularly in america, is this ideal type of psychological man, this modern character type is preoccupied with selfawareness, preoccupied with selfesteem, is engaged in a kind of unceasing quest for fulfillment in one way or another, for emotional wellbeing. Psychological man, in short, i think, has jettisoned morality for therapy as a kind of way to be in the world, and its quite clear this new therapeutic sensibility began spreading in American Culture by the middle decades of the 20th century and has become an enormous influence in our modern values as it has spread into our thinking about education, child rearing, family life, religion, even political ideology as well. Well, carnegie, i think, was at the absolute heart of this process, the kind of psychologizing of modern American Culture. He liked to spent himself as an expert in, his phrase, practical psychology. And he emerged as really the first great popularizer of the newfound stress on Mental Health and selfesteem. The carnegie course that he presented all the way up to his death in the mid1950s, tried to eradicate what carnegie called the inferiority complex that people would bring into his courses. He advertised the course for its reliance on the significant discoveries of modern psychology, and in how to win friends and influence people, you may know if you read that book, he instructed readers that when youre dealing with people this is this phrase we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion. End quote. And throughout that become, littered in each and every chapter, are the psychological ideas popularized of william james, alfred adler, Sigmund Freud and other figures, and using them, carnegie urges his readers over and over again to continuously gauge the psychological needs of people theyre involved with. Coworkers, families, associates, and so on, and society, clients, and to try to meet those needs with psychological sensitivity. He advocated, for example, positive thinking, and the art of appreciation, which he described as the easiest of all psychological techniques. To help people feel comfortable, to win friends and influence people, as the title of his famous back. How to win friends would make, he argues in the book and i quote here again the principles of psychology easy for you to apply in your daily contacts. And it was create among readers a new way of life, he says, that will pave the way to success. So, from this collection of cultural ingredients, success ideology, these notions of charismatic personality, positive thinking, human relations, therapeutic wellbeingcarnegie created what i think was his ultimate legacy in American Culture and that is the establishment of a robust selfhelp movement that has shaped modern American Culture in fundamental ways indeed. In the wake of his stunning success, i think a host of dazzling popular selfhelp gurus have spread out over the american landscape. Norm yap vincent peale. Robert surer, deepak chopra. Steven covey, oprah winfrey. Countless others, those are the allstar team. They have fanned out into our daily lives preparing messages of presenting messages of personal improvement, human relations, therapeutic adjustment as techniques for getting ahead and prospering and achieving selffulfillment in our modern life. But carnegies basic nation embodied in how to win friends and influence people, that the individual who learns, carnegies words, the fine art of getting along with people in everyday business and social contact, will enjoy more profit, more leisure, and what is more important, more happiness in business and in home life. This book, i think, became the text of this modern success creed. I think Dale Carnegie is the godfather of selfhelp in modern American Life. Carnegie went on to a rich and full life after the publication of this book in the 1930s. He flourished as a beloved teacher who in the carnegie course, through the 40s and 405s, still spend the great majority of his time with the carnegie course around the country, frap characterized franchised in the United States and around the globe, and still graduates hundreds of people every year from the course, which is still flourishing. He became a bestselling author in 1948, with a book called how to stop worrying and start living. Which was a kind of guide book for stressed out suburbanites after world war ii, who had become prosperous but still werent happy, and carnegie wrote the book to east them toward happiness. I would also note that after finally marrying at advanced age he became a father for the first time at the fairly advanced aim of 63. Something i can identify with. I didnt quite make that mark but i did my part here. With puck toured here with the younger woman he married and his daughter, donna, who was born in the early 50s. So he does become a father in this period, at least officially. I also feel obligated to note that actually one of the most interesting things about the become, i stumbled across some rather how to describe this curious letters that were in the carnegie archives, and neither carnegie family nor the carnegie people knew anything about them. They were from a woman, and i played Sherlock Holmes and ended up discovering this secret life that Dale Carnegie had. He had a long loving relationship with a married woman, and a child resulted from this that carnegie believed was his, and with absolutely no one knowing about it, even his family, up to about one year ago, he supported this girl financially and emotionally as well. He became good friends not only with his mistress but with his mistress husband, who was a blind man who had stewedded to be a rabbi. One never knows what youre going to run across in research. Actually, its a fascinating story about sort of a larger context, i suppose, of winning friends and influencing people. [laughter] but if you want to know what thats all about, you have to by the become. So, to bring all of this to a close, i think in an overarching sense what i would like to leave you with is the idea, i guess, that carnegie, Dale Carnegies impact as an hoytal figure was really profound, because i think he is the greatest popular spokesman for modern ideas about success in at the culture we still inhabit today, and whatever you make of modern therapeutic culture, of personality and selfesteem, you have to acknowledge the crucial efforts of an ambitious farm boy from missouri in shaping its powerful role. Long ago, of course, it was Thomas Jefferson who coined the most american of phrases, the pursuit of happiness, but it was dale car fig carnegie issue suggest, who defined the modern meaning of the phrase. The end. [applause] thank you very much. If you have questions please come up to the microphone, and the book is for sale at barnes noble outside. Start here. Thank you. Thank you for your talk. Just a quick question. In view of the fact that Dale Carnegie had such an impact on multiple generations, and also considering that Rush Limbaugh is in the missouri hall of fame, i couldnt help but wonder if indeed Dale Carnegie is in the missouri hall of fame. Thank you. Ohi thought you were going to ask something different. I believe he is, yes, as a matter of fact. And i also just found out that the warrensburg folks called me and theyre creating a hall of fame at that Central Missouri university, i believe its called now, and theyre going to have a little ceremony in the fall for carnegie. Theyve commissioned a bust of him and so on. So he is getting recognition here. Thank you. So you mentioned his damn fool things ive done. But they were kind of nonspecific. Did he mention who they happened with or what was the context of some of those . Yes. Its really actually it was great reading because his private writing was much like his public writing, very perky and interesting and he sort of lashing himself, i had a meeting with joe something i and some other people and he cussed a little bit. He said, you know, damned if i doesnt run my mouth off the whole time and they couldnt get a word in edge wise, and then i thought, i didnt hear anything they said, woe is me. And all kinds of examples, social encounters, specific ones where you had the interesting specter of the man who wrote the book, trying to remember to apply his own principles to himself, and he sometimes he met them, sometimes he fell short, but very specific. I was wondering how much you felt these principles apply in 2014 in that the things that come to my mind in terms of influencing people, i think we probably want the Koch Brothers to write the book. And the internet, for example, as a source of information and source of influence, seems to overshadow a great deal of individual personality and their agreeableness or their able to get along. Thats a very good question, i think, and i think my answer to it would be kind of complex. I think as far as the internet goes, that i am sensing that the internet is changing our life and our culture in ways were only dimly beginning to appreciate, and the honest answer is, i dont know. Because the students that i teach these days i often talk to my wife, every year they seem just a little bit more alien to me. Coming out of this kind of social media interconnected culture where theyre in a very different wave length. So in that sense im not sure, but maybe in a broader sense, irstill think his principles are applicable as for as interacting because economically and socially and culturally, its big bureaucratic institutions that sill structure a good deal of what we do. Instead of arguing and fighting and trying to produce things that works a lot better if you sort of slide around the edges if you try to treat people and positive way, if you try to let other people think it is their idea. Mmi perks a little bit better that way. Some of the principles are still pretty potent ones. Ive heard of a place called Carnegie Hall in new york. Was it maybe theatrical. Right, right. My question is thats a good question, too. Carnegie hall is named after the steel magnate industrials. But there is an interesting story and carnegie originally spelt his name carnegie. And that was the way he spelled his name until he was and is 20 and he went to new york city and he got in office to Carnegie Hall and be the shrewd boy that he was, he decided that he should change the name of the spelling of his last name because his explanation was everybody pronounced it that way anyways. I think there is a little bit more to it. The other thing i found fascinating is when you change the spelling of his name, he removed the na wife in the middle of his name, which i think fits very nicely with the emphasis on positive thinking. Its probably a better baloney, but i always like to say it. Carnegies advisors uniquely american. Im a nervous look at worldwide acceptance and what cultures with it very much accepted name . Thats a good question, too. It is my impression from doing some reading about sort of the aftermath of carnegie after his death that the internationalization of the carnegie course in the carnegie principles sort of followed the trail of the western expansion of the American Economy after world war ii. I think its particularly western ideas that have to do a certain bureaucratic capitalism in the way things work as i think it became suitable church markets around the world. Thats where the action