Confronting Books in Order

The Confronting books are nonfiction works associated with Bill O'Reilly that examine historical figures through their actions, influence and moral choices. Confronting the Presidents, published in 2024 with Martin Dugard, surveys the American presidency from George Washington to Joe Biden. Confronting Evil, published in 2025 with Josh Hammer, broadens the subject to rulers, movements and criminals whose conduct the authors examine as examples of destructive power. Each volume has its own subject and can be read independently.

Confronting the Presidents is organized around individual portraits of the people who have held the office. Alongside policies and public achievements, the book considers personalities, family relationships and everyday habits. Its approach brings questions about national leadership together with details of the private lives behind it. First ladies also appear as participants in the history, rather than simply background figures. The authors discuss both celebrated presidents and those whose names occupy a smaller place in public memory.

The book asks readers to consider how a president's reputation can change over time.

Its assessments address success, failure and the continuing effects of decisions made under the pressures of a particular era. Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy and later presidents belong to a sequence extending across very different political circumstances. The portraits create a broad introduction to the office while giving room to anecdotes and personal correspondence. Readers interested in one administration can approach an individual chapter, while reading across the volume emphasizes the changing demands of the presidency and the variety of people who have met them.

Confronting Evil uses a different range of examples to examine suffering inflicted through deliberate choices. Its subjects include Genghis Khan, Caligula and Henry VIII, along with Stalin, Hitler, Mao and more recent figures and organizations. The book also considers wrongdoing associated with slave traders, businesses and drug cartels. Its stated framework is moral as well as historical, using a Judeo-Christian understanding of good and evil to examine conduct and responsibility. The focus moves beyond holding office to the use and abuse of influence in several forms.

Together, these volumes connect historical narrative with explicit evaluation. The coauthors and scope change between books, so the series offers related approaches rather than a continuous account or recurring story. Readers can choose according to their interest in American political biography or the wider history of violence and oppression. In both cases, the central material concerns what powerful people did and how those actions affected others.