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Warren had found this system at his grandfather’s house, where he read everything he could get his hands on at a blazing pace, just as he did at home. Browsing the bookshelf in the back bedroom, he had consumed every issue of the Progressive Grocer and every single copy of the Daily Nebraskan that had been edited by his father, and worked his way like a boll weevil through all fifteen years of the Reader’s Digest that Ernest had accumulated. This bookcase also held a series of small biographies, many of them on business leaders. Since a young age Warren had studied the lives of men like Jay Cooke, Daniel Drew, Jim Fisk, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller, and Andrew Carnegie. Some of these books he read and reread. One of them was special—not a biography but a paperback written by former salesman Dale Carnegie,8 enticingly titled How to Win Friends and Influence People. He had discovered it at age eight or nine.

Warren knew he needed to win friends, and he wanted to influence people. He opened the book. It hooked him from the first page. “If you want to gather honey,” it began, “don’t kick over the beehive.”9

Criticism is futile, said Carnegie.

Rule number one: Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain.

This idea riveted Warren. Criticism was something he knew everything about.

Criticism puts people on the defensive, Carnegie said, and makes them strive to justify themselves. It is dangerous, because it wounds people’s precious pride, hurts their sense of importance, and arouses resentment. Carnegie advocated avoiding confrontation. “People don’t want criticism. They want honest and sincere appreciation.” I am not talking about flattery, Carnegie said. Flattery is insincere and selfish. Appreciation is sincere and comes from the heart. The deepest urge in human nature is “the desire to be important.”10

Although “don’t criticize” was the most important, there were thirty rules in all.

Everybody wants attention and admiration. Nobody wants to be criticized.

The sweetest sound in the English language is the sound of a person’s own name.

The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.

Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.

Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.

Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly. Let the other person save face.

I am talking about a new way of life, Carnegie said. I am talking about a new way of life.

Warren’s heart lifted. He thought he had found the truth. This was a system. He felt so disadvantaged socially that he needed a system to sell himself to people, a system he could learn once and use without having to respond in a new way to each changing situation.

But it took numbers to prove that it actually worked. He decided to do a statistical analysis of what happened if he did follow Dale Carnegie’s rules, and what happened if he didn’t. He tried giving attention and appreciation, and he tried doing nothing or being disagreeable. People around him did not know he was performing experiments on them in the silence of his own head, but he watched how they responded. He kept track of his results. Filled with a rising joy, he saw what the numbers proved: The rules worked.

Now he had a system. He had a set of rules.

But it did you no good to read about the rules. You had to live them. I am talking about a new way of life, said Carnegie.

Warren began to practice. He started at a very elementary level. Some of it came naturally to him, but he found that this system could not be applied in an automatic and easy manner. “Don’t criticize” sounded simple, but there were ways to criticize without even realizing it. It was hard not to show off, not to display annoyance and impatience. And admitting you were wrong was easy sometimes and very difficult at other times. Giving people attention and sincere appreciation and admiration was one of the hardest. Someone sunk in misery