Books: "Confronting America" By Bill O'Reilly

 

Confronting America: What Has to Change

By Bill O'Reilly & Josh Hammer

St. Martin's Press; hardcover, 304 pages; $32.00

Iconic television news journalist and radio host Bill O'Reilly hosts "No Spin News," weeknights on The First TV, a new media network on many digital platforms, including Roku, Amazon Fire, and Apple TV. He also hosts "The O'Reilly Update" on the radio, and that can he heard on the Pandora app and over 300 stations across the country, including WABC here in New York. He has been a broadcaster for over 50 years, and he has won three Emmys and numerous other journalism accolades. Before his long tenure with Fox News when he anchored the top-ranked "The O'Reilly Factor," he was a national correspondent for CBS News and ABC News, as well as a reporter-anchor for WCBS-TV here in New York.

O'Reilly is also a prominent author, with 20 number-one ranked non-fiction books. That includes his renowned Killing series, which he wrote with Martin Dugard and is the most popular series of narrative histories in the world, with 19 million copies in print and a remarkable run of #1 New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestsellers. There have been 13 books in the Killing series to this point. Recent releases include Killing the Killers (please click here for our review), which focused on the War on Terror and became a #1 New York Times and national bestseller, and Killing the Legends, on Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Muhammad Ali. (click here for our review). 

Josh Hammer studied political theory at George Washington University and international politics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He writes and produces some of the most successful programs in the country, including "The O'Reilly Update." Last fall, O'Reilly and Hammer published their first book together, Confronting Evil (click here for our review).

In the engrossing new book Confronting America, O'Reilly offers a deeply personal account of America's history as the country is at a tipping point. As part of his comprehensive work, it is informed by first-hand encounters with and opinions about some of the most consequential leaders of our time and their actions.

These include a look at the American presidents for the past three decades, starting with Bill Clinton, followed by George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald J. Trump. There is also a look at media titans and pop culture legends who have brought us here.

O'Reilly examines what transpired and why events unfolded as they did. Why were some decisions made, and some not, and most importantly, how America has to change to maintain its standing in the world and regain its strength and purpose.

This book is not so much a history lesson, as a lesson in character and how people handle themselves, such as whether you're a patriot or how religious you are, and how considerate you are of one another. He takes moments in history that the country experienced, and personal ones involving others that he was perceived to have disagreements with, from President Obama to Dave Letterman to, surprisingly, Rush Limbaugh. O'Reilly shows how he handled each in a respectful way, in a contrast to what we see too much of and could be leading this country down a dark path.

"The unintended consequences of disrespectful behavior are staggering for America," O'Reilly writes. "Most conflict stems from a lack of courtesy - both on personal and policy matters. The two political parties now loathe each other because of boorish conduct on both sides. Then media is a hateful mess that tries to destroy people it doesn't like. Relationships fracture at an alarming rate because civility disappears when opinions differ. Even families are falling apart over a lack of respect."

This can be linked to another issue O'Reilly sees, that people are trapped in their ideological bubbles, how they "only want to see stuff they agree with," as he puts it. That has led to the rise of the far left, people who "were on the lunatic fridge" a couple of decades ago, but now control legislatures in States including New York and California. Part of that is tied to young people believing Socialism is better than capitalism, due to a lack of knowledge of the failure of Socialism throughout history all over the world.

O'Reilly sees one way out of this extremism and ignorance, as he writes, "The key to America's future is good leadership. That means elected officials who are invested in solving complicated problems. But if voters don't know or care about what these politicians are putting out there, how can we elect the best and the brightest? We can't."

The Biden Presidency is one O'Reilly takes to task for many reasons, especially its abject failures at the Southern border. Along with that, he takes on the media's role in it, how they built up the myth of Joe Biden throughout his entire career, starting with when he was a Senator for over three decades.

"Competency is the largest myth surrounding the Biden presidency, but there are scores more," O'Reilly writes. "Perhaps the most dangerous, to me and you, is the failure to monitor the president's mental and physical condition.

"The leaders of the Democratic Party, and some of Biden's own cabinet members, simply did not tell the truth about the boss - which was an amazing display of deceit."

This is part of a larger pattern of mythmaking in American history, as O'Reilly sees it, going back to Teddy Roosevelt in the early 1900s, and the reason is the dereliction of duty by the school system to teach American history.

Confronting America is a thought-provoking read because O'Reilly doesn't blame the American people for what's happened, but the ones who laid the foundation for this present moment, an ecosystem of politics, the media, and education that has been very destructive for decades, while also showing how a turning point is on the horizon.