A History of Bill O'Reilly Being the Worst, as Told Through Amazon Reviews of His Books

Everything Bill O’Reilly touches turns to shit. While it is important to talk about his history of sexual harassment and generally treating women like garbage, it is equally important to remember that this is not the story of a talented man with flaws: this is an awful man who has done nothing but awful things throughout his personal and professional life. His racist dog whistles and indulgence of conspiracy theories served as missionary work for the Tea Party. It is difficult to say that one man got Donald Trump elected President, but if Trump is the end product of the Tea Party movement, a dark bloated anti-Messiah slouching towards Mar-A-Lago, O’Reilly is his John the Baptist. O’Reilly’s unhinged ramblings have, sadly, become the executive branch’s go-to policy, even if Bill himself has become irrelevant and is now out of a job.

Beyond all this, there are still more terrible things to say about Bill O’Reilly. On top of being a gas bag that put the wind in the sails of millions of uncomfortable Thanksgiving dinner conversations, he was also a hack author of shit books that have clogged the New York Times’ bestseller list for over a decade. His books came in two forms: ostensible excerpts from his show and amateur histories. The histories, perhaps, are the more damning of the two, since they veer out of his lane like a drunk driver, stealing glory that should be given to actual historians. His other books take the unhinged, finger-wagging rhetoric of his show and plaster on a veneer of faux literary seriousness and aww shucks! martyrdom that make them even more unbearable than The O’Reilly Factor. Don’t just take it from me: let’s take it from the people who have actually gone through the harrowing experience of reading his trashy books and lived to leave Amazon reviews.

Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency (2015)

The only thing most Americans want less than stories about Ronald Reagan’s sex life is stories about O’Reilly’s sex life.

Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever (2011)

Keep It Pithy: Useful Observations in a Tough World (2013)

Killing Jesus: A History (2013)

There are 23 pages of one star reviews for this one. Congrats Bill!

Old School: Life in the Sane Lane (2017)

This is the kind of book you just knew O’Reilly wrote before even learning of its existence. Shocker, it's a treatise on how everything was better when Baby Boomers were kids. Given the circumstances of his fall from grace, this one may go down as one of the 21st century's great pieces of literary schadenfreude.