Predictable but coffee-table worthy
Customer Rating: 
If you are enamored of Billy Graham and his ministry you will love this book. It's full of good news stories about people who credit him with changing their lives and chock full of great photos. Very nice cover, too.
Graham started his career as a Fuller Brush salesman and rapidly became that company's number one peddler in South Carolina. He was a salesman first, and he never lost the knack. To those of a more critical mind set, it is surely apparent that evangelism is principally salesmanship and Graham himself compared it to selling soap. Having satisfied customers is necessary to success and this slim volume is mostly testimonials.
However, there's really nothing new here. The stories Graham has spun about his early years have become set pieces and they're trotted out again as received wisdom, with the addition of those heart-warming stories of salvation. Good on them.
As far as I can determine, the only two writers who have made serious efforts at defogging the spin from Graham's public relations machine are Marshall Frady, Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness and myself, The Prince of War: Billy Graham's Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire. The rest, like Invitation, are predictable fluff.
