Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (né Carnagey until c. 1922) (November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American writer, lecturer, and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. Born into poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), a massive bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (1948), Lincoln the Unknown (1932), and several other books.
One of the core ideas in his books is that it is possible to change other peoples' behavior by changing one's behavior toward them.
Born in 1888 in Maryville, Missouri, Carnegie was a poor farmer's boy, the second son of James William Carnagey (b. Indiana, February 1852 – living 1910) and wife Amanda Elizabeth Harbison (b. Missouri, February 1858 – living 1910). His family moved to Belton, Missouri when he was a small child. In his teens, though still having to get up at 4 a.m. every day to milk his parents' cows, he managed to obtain an education at the State Teacher's College in Warrensburg. His first job after college was selling correspondence courses to ranchers. He moved on to selling bacon, soap, and lard for Armour& Company. He was successful to the point of making his sales territory of South Omaha, Nebraska, the national leader for the firm.[1]
After saving $500 (about $12300 today), Dale Carnegie quit sales in 1911 in order to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a Chautauqua lecturer. He ended up instead attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, but found little success as an actor, though it is written that he played the role of Dr. Hartley in a road show of Polly of the Circus.[2] When the production ended, he returned to New York, unemployed, nearly broke, and living at the YMCA on 125th Street. There he got the idea to teach public speaking, and he persuaded the Y manager to allow him to instruct a class in return for 80% of the net proceeds. In his first session, he had run out of material. Improvising, he suggested that students speak about something that made them angry, and discovered that the technique made speakers unafraid to address a public audience.[3] From this 1912 début, the Dale Carnegie Course evolved. Carnegie had tapped into the average American's desire to have more self-confidence, and by 1914, he was earning $500 (about $11500 today) every week.
Perhaps one of Carnegie's most successful marketing moves was to change the spelling of his last name from Carnagey to Carnegie, at a time when Andrew Carnegie (unrelated) was a widely revered and recognized name. By 1916, Dale was able to rent Carnegie Hall itself for a lecture to a packed house.[4] Carnegie's first collection of his writings was Public Speaking a Practical Course for Business Men (1926), later entitled Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business (1932). His crowning achievement, however, was when Simon & Schuster published How to Win Friends and Influence People. The book was a bestseller from its debut in 1936,[5] in its 17th printing within a few months.[4] By the time of Carnegie's death, the book had sold five million copies in 31 languages, and there had been 450,000 graduates of his Dale Carnegie Institute.[6] It has been stated in the book that he had critiqued over 150,000 speeches in his participation in the adult education movement of the time.[7] During World War I he served in the U.S. Army.[8]
His first marriage ended in divorce in 1931. On November 5, 1944, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he married Dorothy Price Vanderpool, who also had been divorced. Vanderpool had two daughters; Rosemary, from her first marriage, and Donna Dale from their marriage together.
Carnegie died at his home in Forest Hills, New York.[9] He was buried in the Belton, Cass County, Missouri, cemetery. The official biography from Dale Carnegie & Associates, Inc. states that he died of Hodgkin's disease, complicated with uremia, on November 1, 1955.[10]

How to Win Friends and Influence People 
Published in 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People is still a popular book in business and Business Communication skills. Dale Carnegie's four part book is packed with advice to create success in business and personal lives. How to Win Friends and Influence People is a tool used in Dale Carnegie Training and includes the following parts
Part One Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
Part Two Six Ways to Make People Like You
Part Three How to Win People to Your Way of Thinking
Part Four Be a Leader - How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment

Dale Carnegie Training 
Dale Carnegie Course in Effective Speaking and Human Relations is learn-by-doing based program for individuals based on Dale Carnegie's teachings. It was founded in 1912 and is represented in more than 80 countries. More than 8 million people have completed Dale Carnegie Training.[5]
The course comprises a proprietary process that uses team dynamics and intra-group activities to strengthen interpersonal relations, manage stress and handle fast-changing workplace conditions. Other subjects included are communication, creative problem-solving and focused leadership.
The course is based on a five-phase continuous improvement cycle
Build greater self-confidence
Strengthen people skills
Enhance communication skills
Develop leadership skills
Improve our attitude and reducing stress

In Japan
On July 24, 1939, Carnegie made his first visit to Japan. Invited by the Japanese Board of Tourist Industry and Japanese Government Railways in an effort to improve communications and cultural understanding between America and Japan, Carnegie arrived on a self-described Relaxation Tour.[11]
After his steam ship docked in Yokohama, he made his way to the famous Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. From July 24 to July 30, he met representatives from the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo and the NichiNichi Tokyo newspaper in Karuizawa. On July 31, he was the guest of honour giving a talk on human relations at a special luncheon held at the American Club in Tokyo.[11]
Carnegie’s travels continued as far south as Shimonoseki, visiting Miyanoshita, Kawana, Atami, Gamagori, Gifu, Yamada, Toba, Nara, Kyoto and Hiroshima along the way. During the course of his visit, he had stayed at the Fujiya Hotel in Miyanoshita City, the Nara Hotel in Nara City, the TokiwaKan in Gamagori, the Nagaragawa Hotel in Gifu, visited the Ise Shrine in Mie Prefecture and observed the Mikimoto pearl fisheries in Toba.[11] That visit to Gifu would prove to be a major turning point in the development of Dale Carnegie Training in Japan, because that was the time that Dale Carnegie met Frank Mochizuki.
On August 6, Dale Carnegie took a steamboat from Shimonoseki to Pusan, Korea where he embarked on a brief tour of the country, eventually making his way to Beijing and Shanghai.[11]
On September 1, 1939, he made his second visit to Japan before returning home. This time he visited the Daibutsu in Kamakura and again stayed at the Imperial Hotel. He departed for America on September 4, 1939.[11]
In July 1953, Carnegie made his third visit to Japan, meeting friends from his previous visit and taking time to enjoy the sights of Kyoto.[12]
Yukinaga “Frank” Mochizuki met Dale Carnegie in 1939, just before the Pacific War started and eventually would bring Dale Carnegie Training to Japan.[13] He went to Keio University in Tokyo and after graduation studied hotel management for a year at the YMCA and then went to work at the Nagaragawa Hotel in Gifu Prefecture. In 1939 during his first visit to Japan, Dale Carnegie stayed at the Nagaragawa Hotel in Gifu where Mochizuki was working. “I was so impressed by his high ideals to make people think and act in terms of others. At this time I thought that if statesmen and diplomats thought like Dale Carnegie, there would most probably be no war in the world. Mr. Carnegie gave me a student’s edition of “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. Throughout the war I carried this precious volume as my Bible in associating with people”.
In 1952 Mochizuki went to the United States and studied hotel operation and tourism at the Phoenix College in Arizona as well as at Michigan State University. Upon completion of his studies, he was invited by the Hilton Hotels to study their management system. He worked as a trainee in the various departments of the hotel management for four years at Chicago's Conrad Hilton Hotel and Palmer House.
“While I was at Palmer House, I suddenly noticed that Hilton officials were outstanding in leadership, especially in their handling of subordinates and customers, of course. Upon asking the reason, I discovered that many of them were graduates of the Dale Carnegie course”. Before I entered the course, I never thought I would be able to deliver a speech in front of American people because of my borrowed language. But by the fifth session, I was completely changed”. He was voted by his classmates as one of the three champion speakers for the commencement ceremony.
“At that time I felt I really had a mission to plant the seed of Dale Carnegie in the soil of Japan so that Japanese people could think on their feet and express themselves, especially to people of other countries”.
After his return to Japan at the end of 1959, Mochizuki began talking to top people in business, finance and industry. “Although I had difficulty in convincing the people I talked to because of the entirely different ways of thinking, after a two year struggle, I finally succeeded”.
In 1962-63 Dale Carnegie Training was launched in Japan. Edwin Whitlow, from Hawaii acted as a sponsor for Frank Mochizuki, until he could take over the running of Dale Carnegie in Japan by himself. Whitlow died on March 8, 1980 on a visit to Oregon, after having been hit by a car.[14] In the early 1960s, Mochizuki had contacted Dale Carnegie and Associates in America about starting Dale Carnegie Training in Japan, but it was decided he needed a mentor to help him understand the training methodologies and the brand. Whitlow agreed to become the first Sponsor and the license was granted to him in October 1962. Whitlow would fly to Japan from Hawaii and spend a number of weeks each time, conducting classes and mentoring Mochizuki.
The first class took place on January 3, 1963. “Primarily we intend to destroy fear, overcome inferiority complexes and help the student to draw out his potentiality to the maximum extent. We seek the best point if each student and try and bring it out. We teach students not to compare themselves with others – everyone is different with different abilities. One must be oneself and compare himself with the way he was yesterday”.
Mochizuki was known as a dynamic salesman and he was very successful in expanding Dale Carnegie Training in Japan. He also was quite astute in recruiting leading businessmen, who were running major foreign companies in Japan, to become his trainers. The Presidents of such well known brand names as Warner Brothers and Bank of America were amongst the early trainers. They had good English, were international in their outlook and understood the power of the Dale Carnegie content.
In 1966 Mochizuki organized the first University Class.[15] Prior to this he developed a profile of university students. He interviewed personnel directors of 318 companies and the Dean of Students at 10 universities. His research convinced him that 90% of university students and young university graduates lacked confidence in their communications and human relations abilities, and that most were not aware of the necessity of human relations because they lived in an isolated (tight shell) world. He also found that 90% of the students had no strong desire to improve themselves and that most of them had vague objectives or were going to school without a definite purpose.
Mochizuki did find that 10% of Keio University students were interested in what he told them about the Dale Carnegie course and some came to observe one of the adult classes in session. At Keio, 80% of the students who Mochizuki interviewed enrolled in the University Student Classes and at other universities 40% enrolled. In 1966 and thereafter the classes were held on the premises of Sophia University in Tokyo.
In October 1967, the pilot class for the Dale Carnegie Sales Course was held with J. Edwin Whitlow coming from Hawaii to conduct the training.
Frank Mochizuki eventually retired and was succeeded by Tokugen Yamamoto in 1994, until his sudden death in 1995.[16] Yamamoto was described as brilliant and high hopes were held for the brand under his leadership. Following his unexpected passing, his wife, Yukiko Yamamoto, took over the responsibilities for Carnegie in Japan until 2007 when she retired. Craig Kirkwood succeeded Mrs. Yamamoto and in 2010 he passed the responsibility for Dale Carnegie in Japan to Dr. Greg Story.

Books 
1915 Art of Public Speaking,[16] with Joseph Berg Esenwein.
1920 Public Speaking the Standard Course of the United Y. M. C. A. Schools.[17]
1926 Public Speaking a Practical Course for Business Men.[18] Later editions and updates changed the name of the book several times Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business (1937 revised),[19] How to Develop Self-Confidence and Influence People by Public Speaking (1956) [20] and Public Speaking for Success (2005).[21]
1932 Lincoln, the Unknown.[22]
1934 Little Known Facts About Well Known People.[23]
1936 How to Win Friends and Influence People.[24]
1937 Five Minute Biographies.[25]
1944 Dale Carnegie's Biographical round-up.[26]
1948 How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.[27]
1959 Dale Carnegie's Scrapbook a Treasury of the Wisdom of the Ages.[28] A selection of Dale Carnegie's writings edited by Dorothy Carnegie.
1962 The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking.[29] The fourth revision of Public speaking and influencing men in business, by Dorothy Carnegie, based upon Dale Carnegie's own notes and ideas but a very different book than original.

Booklets 
1938 How to Get Ahead in the World Today
1936 The Little Golden Book (later renamed The Golden Book, lists basics from HTWFIP and HTSWSL)
1946 How to Put Magic in the Magic Formula
1947 A Quick and Easy Way to Learn to Speak in Public. (later combined as Speak More Effectively, 1979)
1952 How to Make Our Listeners Like Us.[30] (later combined as Speak More Effectively, 1979)
1959 How to Save Time and Get Better Results in Conferences (later renamed Meetings Quicker & Better Results)
1960 How to Remember Names (later renamed as Remember Names)
1965 The Little Recognized Secret of Success (later renamed Live Enthusiastically)
1979 Apply Your Problem Solving Know How