Former top-rated Fox News host Bill O’Reilly has been somewhat quiet since he was forced out of the network he dominated for years, but he hasn’t completely disappeared.
Indeed, O’Reilly has moved back into the spotlight once again after his latest book, “Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History,” reached number one on the vaunted New York Times nonfiction bestseller list.
“Killing the SS” was published with O’Reilly’s regular co-writer Martin Duggard, and details the post-World War II efforts to track down and capture or kill or otherwise bring justice to Nazi war criminals.
O’Reilly knocks Carlson from top spot
O’Reilly’s book vaulting to number one on the bestseller list means the book previously listed at the top of the chart had to be knocked off, and therein lies the irony of the situation.
“Killing the SS” supplanted “Ship of Fools” at the top of the list, a book written by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a position that book held for just one week, after it had, in turn, knocked famed Watergate journalist Bob Woodward’s anti-Trump book “Fear” from the top spot.
The ironic part of that development is that Carlson succeeded O’Reilly in the same weeknight time slot on Fox News and has similarly dominated the cable news ratings in O’Reilly’s former position.
According to the latest list of nonfiction bestsellers, O’Reilly’s book is number one, followed by Carlson’s at number two. Woodward’s book has now dropped to number four on the list.
Achieved without the benefit of a major platform
After O’Reilly had left Fox News, there was some discussion as to whether his books would continue to enjoy the same level of success that they had previously.
This was largely due to the fact that O’Reilly no longer had the visibility provided by a Fox News program to promote his books to his millions of readers, supporters and viewers.
But it would seem that O’Reilly’s reputation, or at least that of his prior bestselling books in the “Killing…” series, was more than enough to make up for the loss of the promotional platform that was his Fox News program.
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It remains to be seen just how long O’Reilly’s book will remain in the top spot on the bestsellers list, and it would be interesting to see if it and Carlson’s book swap places again in the coming weeks or if some other book comes along that will knock both of those books out of the top ranked positions.
Regardless, O’Reilly has shown that he is still able to produce bestselling nonfiction books even without the benefit of a top-rated cable news program.