How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (memoir) to sue him) and "Vanity Fair"'s own Graydon Carter. Young also describes awkward run-ins with American celebrities including Nathan Lane, Mel Gibson and Diana Ross. Throughout the book, Young describes being tormented by his friend "Alex de Silva" (speculated to be Sacha Gervasi), a former colleague of Young's who manages to succeed in America in every way that Young does not. The title of Young's book is a parody of the title of Dale Carnegie's 1937 perennial bestseller, "How to Win Friends and Influence People"; a parody by Irving Tressler titled "How to Lose Friends and Alienate People" was also
How to Win Friends and Influence People that you may screw things out of them." However, despite the criticism, sales continued to soar and the book was talked about and reviewed as it rapidly became mainstream. Scholarly critique however, was little and oscillated over time. Due to the book's lay appeal, it was not significantly discussed in academic journals. In the early stages of the book's life, the few scholarly reviews that were written explained the contents of the book and attempted to describe what made the book popular. As time passed however, scholarly reviews became more critical, chiding Carnegie for being insincere and manipulative. Despite the