How to Win Friends and Influence People in publication, Carnegie originally began writing small booklets to go along with his courses. After one of his 14-week courses, he was approached by publisher Leon Shimkin of the publishing house Simon & Schuster. Shimkin urged Carnegie to write a book, but he was not initially persuaded. Shimken then hired a stenographer to type up what he heard in one of Carnegie's long lectures and presented the transcript to Carnegie. Dale Carnegie liked the transcript so much he decided to edit and revise it into a final form. He wanted it to be extremely practical and interesting to read. To
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