How to Win Friends and Influence People in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dale Carnegie began his career not as a writer, but as a teacher of public speaking. He started out teaching night classes at a YMCA in New York and his classes became wildly popular and highly attended. The success of the classes in New York prompted YMCAs in Philadelphia and Baltimore to begin hosting the course as well. After even greater success, Carnegie decided to begin teaching the courses on his own at hotels in London, Paris, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Because he could not find any satisfactory handbook already
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