The Influencer

摘要

The first time I read dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People was in 1990. I was living in Russia; the Cold War had just ended. Capitalist American books suddenly became very popular. Carnegie's was one of the first to be translated into Russian and was "the book to read." Everyone wanted to be a capitalist, and this book was supposed to make me a better one. I decided, however, that it was stuffed with disingenuous fluff-that it taught the reader how to not be authentic; it turned you into a fake. Thinkingback, at the time I read it, that book had no chance of getting through to me. I was a product of the Soviet system. We were Seinfeld's Soup Nazi "No soup foryou" nation. Teachers who were kind and inspired students were considered weak. I remembertwo teachers in my school who were considered virtuosos. Neither one smiled. They rarely praised and were never afraid to insult their students for getting an answer wrong. But they were highly regarded because they knew their subjects well and thoroughly subjugated their students.