I had a bit of an aversion to the premise of the book at first, because it seemed manipulative to me somehow ("winning" and "influencing" people, ie. thinking of them as systems and trying to "hack" them) but I eventually came to see how narcissistic that was--I am not superhuman and cannot exert mind control, so any social "hacking" is really just using the system the way it is designed to be used. At the end of the day, most of Carnegie's advice boils down to being a nice person and putting yourself in other people's shoes often, but with examples of how that sort of behavior can be beneficial to you.