How to Talk Dirty and Influence People political conventions he perceived as having hypocritical tendencies, and widened the boundaries of free speech. The title is a parody of the 1936 bestseller "How to Win Friends and Influence People", by Dale Carnegie. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People How to Talk Dirty and Influence People is an autobiography by Lenny Bruce, an American satirist and comedian, who died in 1966 at age 40 of a drug overdose. At the request of Hugh Hefner and with the aid of Paul Krassner, Bruce wrote the work in serialized format for "Playboy" in 1964 and 1965. Shortly thereafter it was
How to Win Friends and Influence People sold 250,000 copies in the first three months. The book has sold over 15 million copies worldwide since and annually sells in excess of 100,000 copies. A recent Library of Congress survey ranked Carnegie's volume as the seventh most influential book in American history. The book met widespread popularity, but also stark criticism in many cases. Despite many of the negative comments from his critics, Carnegie's book established a new genre. Carnegie described his book as an "action-book" but the category he created has since become known as the self-help genre. Almost every self-help book since has borrowed some type