“ I am reading “Confronting the Presidents.”

Authored by Messrs. Bill O’Reilly and Martin Duggard, instant #1 New York Times and USA Today nonfiction bestseller “Confronting the Presidents” takes an incandescent snapshot of the tenure of every American president – George Washington to the incumbent (2024), Joe Biden.

Confronting the President is written in O’Reilly and Duggard’s unique, emblematic literary style. A patchwork of satire, subject introspection, author retrospection with a dash or more like a splash of panache. I have read and audio listened a few O’Reilly and Duggard books. My favorite is easily ¨Killing JESUS.¨ O’Reilly and Duggard indulge in history and historicity. Contending the Presidents gives the Killing Series (13 books, ~17 million in print) a fair run.

• This is definitely not a one and done. I see myself coming back to this book over and over again making inferences, references and whatnot.
• A must read for American history enthusiasts and for persons who for whatever reason did not study American history.

Notable:

Many Presidents loved their wives deeply – with intensity – and were not afraid to put it in full display of staffers and the public.

Many Presidents outlived their children; very few children survived to adulthood and beyond.

Excerpts:

¨´My wife is as handsome as when she was a girl, and I …… fell in love with her; and what is more, I have never fallen out,´ he (Abraham Lincoln) remarks one evening as she greets guests¨ (Chapter 16, pg. 133, paragraph 2).

¨Conjecture is a fool´s errand¨ (Chapter 16, pg. 136, paragraph 3).

¨No President was ever confronted with more turmoil than Lincoln. But he handled it¨ (Chapter 16, pg. 136, paragraph 4).

¨Perhaps his (Abraham Lincoln) greatest words are from the Second inaugural: ´¨With malice toward none, with clarity for all, with firmness in the right as GOD gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations¨ (Chapter 16, pg. 136, paragraph 5).

Etetor Roland Eshiet