My bitter feelings about this book might be partially due to the fact that when I put it on hold at the library, I thought I was getting Carnegie’s original book. This one is not that. After I read the original I might have better things to say about this one.
That being said, I don’t find anything overwhelmingly wrong with the principles outlined. Most of them are good common sense stuff. That’s the problem though. The only reason to write a book about common sense is if you can provide uncommon insight or make it uncommonly compelling. This reading does neither. Based on a summary comparison it seems like this book addresses the same principles as the original; I can only imagine Carnegie told a more compelling story with them. As far as the “digital age” content in the book, there are a few lines that I think are worth remembering such as the study in the “Smile” chapter that talked about people who are seen smiling in social media pictures have lot’s of positive associations including wealth and a greater number of real friends. There is some interesting stuff about communication with emojis as well.
Still, this could have been included in a reprint of the original with an additional chapter. No need to write an entirely new book!