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Ask Billy Graham
s/t: : The World's Best-Loved Preacher Answers Your Most Important Questions
Would you like to know what Billy Graham thinks about the most important issues of daily life? What about politics, presidents and terrorism? This book contains answers to questions many of us would ask Billy Graham if we had the good fortune to sit down with the person many call "America's Pastor". Best-selling author Bill Adler arranges topics from Graham's sermons, speeches, interviews, television appearances and writings in an easy to follow Q and A format.
Topics include Billy Graham on: Humor, Politics, Prayer, Technology and Religion, Race, Money, the Church, and Growing Older.
Hear Graham's responses to questions like
What will heaven be like? Why does God bring on natural disasters? What do you think about the mixing of religion and politics? What do you say to an atheist who doesn't think there is a God? What is the greatest spiritual threat facing the United States? How can we achieve world peace?240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
8 people are currently reading
26 people want to read
About the author
Bill Adler
335 books15 followersBill Adler pursued his goal of being the P.T. Barnum of books by conceptualizing, writing, editing, compiling and hustling hundreds of them — prompting one magazine to anoint him “the most fevered mind” in publishing.
Mr. Adler achieved early success by collecting and publishing letters children had written to President John F. Kennedy. He followed up with children’s letters to Smokey Bear, Santa Claus, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and President Barack Obama, among many others.
He helped popularize novels written by political, entertainment and sports celebrities, supplying ghostwriters and even plots. He signed up beauty queens to write diet and exercise books.
As an agent, his clients included Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Howard Cosell, Mike Wallace and Ralph Nader.
Mr. Adler was best known for his own titles. He wrote “What to Name Your Jewish Baby” (1966) with Arnie Kogen and “What Is a Cat? For Everyone Who Has Ever Loved a Cat” (1987). In 1969, he compiled “The Wit & Humor of Richard Nixon.” In 1995, he published “Cats’ Letters to Santa.”
One of his more famous tricks — a word he preferred to gimmicks — was the 1983 mystery novel “Who Killed the Robins Family?” by Bill Adler and Thomas Chastain. On the cover was an offer of a $10,000 reward for solving a series of fictional murders.
A team of four married couples from Denver won by coming up with the answers to 39 of 40 questions posed in the book. The book reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list in January 1984 and remained there for the better part of a year, selling about a million copies.
“Ideas are my mistress,” Mr. Adler told United Press International in 1986, saying he used his “given abilities to conceptualize books.”
It was People magazine that commented on Mr. Adler’s “fevered mind” in 1983, adding that publishing traditionalists regarded book packagers like Mr. Adler as “money-crazed barbarians with the sensibilities of turnips.”
Referring to Mr. Adler’s books, Roger W. Straus Jr., president of the publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux, told People: “They’re pretty chintzy, as a rule. It’s like throwing a quarter in the street. If you listen attentively, you find out it ain’t silver when it hits the ground.”
Others disagreed. “I consider Bill Adler unparalleled in the publishing industry — terribly, terribly original,” Mr. Cosell said.
One of Mr. Adler’s best-selling books was a collection called “The Kennedy Wit.” The president’s aides approved the project early in the administration, but Kennedy was said to have been angry about it, causing Random House to drop the idea. Mr. Adler suspected that the president had not wanted his humor emphasized so soon after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.
After 35 more publishers turned the book down, Mr. Adler finally obtained a $2,500 advance from Citadel Press, a small publisher. The book, released in 1964, after the president’s assassination, was on the New York Times best-seller list for more than six months and sold more than 1.4 million copies.
William Jay Adler was born in Brooklyn on May 14, 1929. His parents died when he was a child, and he was raised by relatives. He attended Brooklyn College for three years and was drafted into the Army, then trained as a flamethrower for the Korean War.
After finding out that flamethrowers led infantry into battle, he applied for Armed Forces Radio, saying he had experience in broadcasting, though he did not. He was a disc jockey in Tokyo until his discharge in 1953. He then worked in broadcasting, as humor editor at McCall’s magazine and as a book editor for Playboy, where he first came up with book ideas.
One brainstorm was to ask the Kennedy White House if he could read mail sent to the president. In a time of much looser security, he was allowed to spend the day copying letters in the White House pos
Mr. Adler achieved early success by collecting and publishing letters children had written to President John F. Kennedy. He followed up with children’s letters to Smokey Bear, Santa Claus, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and President Barack Obama, among many others.
He helped popularize novels written by political, entertainment and sports celebrities, supplying ghostwriters and even plots. He signed up beauty queens to write diet and exercise books.
As an agent, his clients included Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Howard Cosell, Mike Wallace and Ralph Nader.
Mr. Adler was best known for his own titles. He wrote “What to Name Your Jewish Baby” (1966) with Arnie Kogen and “What Is a Cat? For Everyone Who Has Ever Loved a Cat” (1987). In 1969, he compiled “The Wit & Humor of Richard Nixon.” In 1995, he published “Cats’ Letters to Santa.”
One of his more famous tricks — a word he preferred to gimmicks — was the 1983 mystery novel “Who Killed the Robins Family?” by Bill Adler and Thomas Chastain. On the cover was an offer of a $10,000 reward for solving a series of fictional murders.
A team of four married couples from Denver won by coming up with the answers to 39 of 40 questions posed in the book. The book reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list in January 1984 and remained there for the better part of a year, selling about a million copies.
“Ideas are my mistress,” Mr. Adler told United Press International in 1986, saying he used his “given abilities to conceptualize books.”
It was People magazine that commented on Mr. Adler’s “fevered mind” in 1983, adding that publishing traditionalists regarded book packagers like Mr. Adler as “money-crazed barbarians with the sensibilities of turnips.”
Referring to Mr. Adler’s books, Roger W. Straus Jr., president of the publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux, told People: “They’re pretty chintzy, as a rule. It’s like throwing a quarter in the street. If you listen attentively, you find out it ain’t silver when it hits the ground.”
Others disagreed. “I consider Bill Adler unparalleled in the publishing industry — terribly, terribly original,” Mr. Cosell said.
One of Mr. Adler’s best-selling books was a collection called “The Kennedy Wit.” The president’s aides approved the project early in the administration, but Kennedy was said to have been angry about it, causing Random House to drop the idea. Mr. Adler suspected that the president had not wanted his humor emphasized so soon after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.
After 35 more publishers turned the book down, Mr. Adler finally obtained a $2,500 advance from Citadel Press, a small publisher. The book, released in 1964, after the president’s assassination, was on the New York Times best-seller list for more than six months and sold more than 1.4 million copies.
William Jay Adler was born in Brooklyn on May 14, 1929. His parents died when he was a child, and he was raised by relatives. He attended Brooklyn College for three years and was drafted into the Army, then trained as a flamethrower for the Korean War.
After finding out that flamethrowers led infantry into battle, he applied for Armed Forces Radio, saying he had experience in broadcasting, though he did not. He was a disc jockey in Tokyo until his discharge in 1953. He then worked in broadcasting, as humor editor at McCall’s magazine and as a book editor for Playboy, where he first came up with book ideas.
One brainstorm was to ask the Kennedy White House if he could read mail sent to the president. In a time of much looser security, he was allowed to spend the day copying letters in the White House pos
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 17, 2024
In his prime in 1996, Billy Graham reached 2.5 billion… people that is. The world population was about 5.8 billion then.
Yet! the world sucks more now than it did then.
You may ask if it is difficult to write a bad review about a book that everyone else gives a five star. No, it is not.
If indeed we are born with evil hearts that only God can resolve, why doesn’t She do it? or why did She create offsprings with deplorable hearts? Oh, I know, we’re all supposed to prostrate ourselves to eternally worship Her because She created us to worship Her. It is not unlike raising farm animals so that we can eat them.
Democracy seems to not exist in this dimension, only robotically doing what we are told.. and loving it.
Secular humanism was blasted for doing good because it is good rather than glorifying God by doing good. Bad, ungodly people. Bad.
Then, there was his hanging out with the powerful rich evil capitalists and politicians whose machinations may have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. They were good- the politicians and capitalists, I mean. Not the civilians.
His kind made sure religion got into politics and many crazed bills resulted. (He would have been thrilled about the Supreme Court.)
The whole world is coming to an end soon malarky, is deleterious to good government. There is no reason to be concerned about, the environment, for example, if Jesus is just a wink away.
Education was scary. Why did they take prayer out of school and put in sex educations? (At least sex ed has been taken out of school and replaced by cell phones.) Now, we are paying to have crazed religious disciples tell their goofiness to captive students. I have not felt so lucky since my ancestors fled Germany because of religious bigots.
Sometimes, the solution is a bigger part of the problem than the problem.
Yet! the world sucks more now than it did then.
You may ask if it is difficult to write a bad review about a book that everyone else gives a five star. No, it is not.
If indeed we are born with evil hearts that only God can resolve, why doesn’t She do it? or why did She create offsprings with deplorable hearts? Oh, I know, we’re all supposed to prostrate ourselves to eternally worship Her because She created us to worship Her. It is not unlike raising farm animals so that we can eat them.
Democracy seems to not exist in this dimension, only robotically doing what we are told.. and loving it.
Secular humanism was blasted for doing good because it is good rather than glorifying God by doing good. Bad, ungodly people. Bad.
Then, there was his hanging out with the powerful rich evil capitalists and politicians whose machinations may have killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. They were good- the politicians and capitalists, I mean. Not the civilians.
His kind made sure religion got into politics and many crazed bills resulted. (He would have been thrilled about the Supreme Court.)
The whole world is coming to an end soon malarky, is deleterious to good government. There is no reason to be concerned about, the environment, for example, if Jesus is just a wink away.
Education was scary. Why did they take prayer out of school and put in sex educations? (At least sex ed has been taken out of school and replaced by cell phones.) Now, we are paying to have crazed religious disciples tell their goofiness to captive students. I have not felt so lucky since my ancestors fled Germany because of religious bigots.
Sometimes, the solution is a bigger part of the problem than the problem.
August 14, 2016
This book was a very quick read despite being 200 over pages. Unlike conventional books, this book is organized into topics and extracts were taken from articles, speeches and interview throughout Billy Graham's life. It quickly gave you a glimpse into the scale of his ministry's impact as most of these sources were secular in nature. If you are looking to get a quick introduction and to gain some bite size snippets of Billy Graham's life, this book is adequate. However, it does lack the depth and insight of study into Billy Graham's life. Nonetheless, this is still a quick read and a light piece to go along with.
March 24, 2015
Loved reading the Rev. Billy Graham's answers to questions from years ago and seeing how his discernment then has played out today. Great book!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews