Self-Help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America by Steven Watts

(Other Press, $30)

Dale Carnegie had perfect timing, said Philip Delves Broughton in The Wall Street Journal. A man “with the yappy vigor of a Jack Russell terrier,” he came to prominence during a major shift in American life. In the first half of the 20th century, as the rise of corporations and material abundance began to make the Puritan virtue of self-denying toil look old-fashioned, Carnegie offered people a new goal: self-fulfillment. His 1936 book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, influenced the behavior of millions, including tycoons, presidents, revolutionaries, and, alas, serial killer Charles Manson. As historian Steven Watts suggests in a book “as jaunty as his protagonist,” Carnegie ushered in a new era in which positivity and people skills reigned supreme.

Watts makes his subject likable from the start, said Laura Miller in Salon.com. Though Carnegie bungled some business decisions and perhaps fathered a child with a married woman, he comes across as “a perfectly lovely man” who sincerely believed what he preached. Born on a Missouri farm, Carnegie propelled himself out of poverty, working in sales and in theater before seeing an opportunity in teaching public speaking at East Coast YMCAs. But the lack of self-doubt that enabled his rise also hampered his ability to answer critics, including those who said his strategies could be misused and that he was equating good character and financial success.

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Permit me to break Carnegie’s rule against direct criticism and say that Self-Help Messiah is “a tad lumbering,” said Maureen Corrigan in NPR.org. Too often, Watts drops the main narrative to offer long descriptions of the Lost Generation ethos or the founding of the YMCA. Still, Self-Help Messiah succeeds in showing how attuned Carnegie was to the fears and anxieties of ordinary Americans, particularly when the Great Depression made optimism scarce. “It’s easy, of course, for us contemporary readers to dismiss Carnegie’s teaching as mere boosterism.” To millions of his contemporaries, it meant much more.