Disclaimer: I have not, and am unlikely to, read any of Bill O’Reilly’s historical work.

That being said, based on the article at hand I have to side with George Will. IMO, O’Reilly blundered so badly in his approach to “Killing Reagan” that he’s likely rendered his book a mere shadow of what it could have been.

The big blunder in question: refusing to interview certain invested participants from the Reagan years, saying “they have skin in the game. We don’t talk to people [with agendas] when we’re writing the books … They have skin in the game, emotion in the game, spin in the game. We don’t talk to anybody who was derogatory to the Reagans or anybody who was laudatory.”

What a terrible mistake, and a gigantic opportunity lost. You talk to *exactly* those people who have skin in the game, just as you talk to the supposedly disinterested parties, and then you do your jobs as historians by applying a skeptical eye to all of it, by seeking to verify, to refute, to find what fits and what contradicts. It’s a boggling decision, to deliberately avoid contact with primary sources.

So why is a geek whining so plaintively about things historical? For a start, the four years I spent getting a degree in history, and the fleeting regrets I sometimes entertain over not pursuing it to a career.