Most readers probably have an opinion on Bill O'Reilly, the anchor of Fox News' successful TV talk show The O'Reilly Factor
. Kitman, a self-professed "liberal TV critic"—who admits, "I don't agree with much of what [O'Reilly] says, but I like the way he says it"—probably won't change a lot of minds with this book. But it's difficult to imagine a better-researched or less-biased work about such a divisive figure as O'Reilly, a man who once told the son of a 9/11 victim to "shut up" on the air. The unauthorized biography draws on interviews with 29 people and five years of research, tracking O'Reilly from his beginnings in Long Island through years of aggressive reporting and management faceoffs (10 news jobs in 15 years) to his perch atop the New Media pyramid and the scandals that have dogged him since. Fans of his bestselling autobiographies may find Kitman's anecdotes familiar, but O'Reilly revilers may be surprised to learn that O'Reilly at first aspired to found a magazine like the Village Voice
, and the man sued for sexual harassment in 2004 was a teetotaler in college. Kitman's reportage on this paradoxical, maddening yet inspiring man does a fine job in letting the reader decide. (Jan.)
