LBC talk show host outlines the way people get fooled by 'right wing rhetoric' and the questions we can ask to destabilise 'fake news'. This book was an interesting and important read.

I really enjoyed this book - I found it informative and funny. I hadn't really heard the author on the radio so it was interesting to see the conversations that he has on his show.
I would recommend this book.

I am a huge fan of James O'Brien and was very excited to see that he had written a book. I really enjoyed his take on the major political issues, and his honesty about how he had grappled with some of the topics included. I would have liked it to been longer, and to have learned a little more about him as a person, but I think it achieves everything it sets out to do.

Although I had only heard brief clips from O'Brien's radio show I was aware he had a reputation for dismantling caller's arguments so thought I'd give this a go. I found it a mixed bag to be honest. I both agreed and disagreed with O'Brien on the various topics covered in this fairly short book. This is a good thing though as it at least makes you think. The author can come across as quite patronising and self-righteous at times (he admits so himself) but this backfires as if you're not careful you start to doubt what could be valid arguments because they are submerged beneath this patronising attitude. Also at times O'Brien doesn't seem to have a strong enough grasp of the views he is criticising which means he bases his arguments on faulty foundations and while sometimes he does provide evidence for his views at other times he makes sweeping assertions without giving any evidence. Possibly what struck me most was that he seems to tackle the arguments of what I'd call 'low hanging fruit' callers (those who have weak arguments anyway) whereas there are academics and intellectuals with much stronger arguments than those who phone in and I think O'Brien would have a much harder time defeating those. This isn't really his fault though as he can only deal with the people who actually phone his show and I suspect the professionals who have the stronger arguments have better things to do with their time than phone radio shows. If you're more left leaning you'll mostly enjoy it, if you're right leaning you'll enjoy it less and if you're somewhere in the middle like me you'll find it a decent exercise in challenging your own thinking and will both agree and disagree with O'Brien.

Thanks to NetGalley/Penguin Random House for review ARC.

I thought How To Be Right was excellent. It is readable, thoughtful, intelligent and humane.

James O’Brien writes very well indeed. Drawing on his experience as a print journalist and then as a long-standing and very successful radio phone-in host, he dissects the prejudices, myths and downright lies which pollute our debates so badly these days. What is so striking, though, is that he tries to believe that people are sincere but have been misled by powerful politicians, media outlets and the like, so he is less concerned with “winning” the argument than with trying to get people actually to analyse and justify their positions. As he says and illustrates well with transcripts from his shows, the absurd, the vitriolic and the hateful rhetoric which is now so common, almost always crumbles in the face of simple questions like “Why do you think that?” or “Can you give me a concrete example?” or “How is that actually affecting you?” He won’t let go of these and explores the logical conclusions of what people say they want to do. It’s refreshing to hear genuine rationality and reality rather than an exchange of pre-digested, unexamined clichés, and his analysis of where we are and its possible future consequences is very shrewd.

This is a brief, intellectually stimulating and enjoyable (if often slightly depressing) read. I can heartily recommend it to anyone who values genuine fact and rationality in a world where “alternative facts” and echo-chamber discourse are becoming more and more dominant.

(My thanks to Penguin/Ebury for an ARC via NetGalley.)

I enjoyed reading the sane and eminently commonsensical views of an intelligent libertarian talk show host and how he uses logic to tear the views of many of his more extreme and even bigoted listeners.

I think this would have worked better as a podcast or audiobook than an actual book given the immediacy of the actual conversations and that sometime sit was a bit of a slog to read and collate the transcripts of the actual telephone calls and conversations - but thought provoking and interesting stuff.

Despite my feelings toward LBC, I’ve always liked James O’Brien. No surprise then, that I thoroughly enjoyed this book, although at times it did have a preach-to-the-choir-feel.

Tackling the hot political and cultural topics of today, O’Brien’s critical analysis is second to none, and the arguments he presents are well reasoned as well as humorous. His examination and confrontation of his own perceived failings made for compelling reading, although I felt the highlight of the book was the inclusion of O’Brien’s debates and arguments with listeners of his radio show.

The skill in which he takes apart his caller’s ill-informed and, in a lot of cases, downright ignorant opinions, is both entertaining as well as enlightening. His refusal to be side-tracked by the more argumentative listeners phoning in to debate in bad faith is captivating, although sometimes I found he was far too kind with some of them.

Highly recommended.

This was an ARC in exchange for an honest review. With thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Random House.

O'Brien is such a sane voice in today's increasingly toxic world... refusing to accept the often unthinking inanities of people incensed by Muslims, migrants, Remainers, uppity women, feminists, gay/trans people, Trump-haters, millenials, the young in general and just about anyone else who doesn't fit into some kind of narrow definition of 'us', he subjects - and importantly - forces them on his phone-in show to subject their often rabid and deeply offensive opinions to factual and cool critical analysis. That he does this with wit, albeit acidic at times, and humour and a kind of dogged refusal to be side-tracked is wholly admirable, revealing and frequently very funny. Although sometimes in a kind of tragic way.

O'Brien as a journalist is more generous than I am in blaming not individuals but the right-wing media which feeds, and makes a profit out of, this kind of right-wing scaremongering. He forces people to try to justify their spoon-fed opinions beyond the soundbite that they adopt so easily - some might change their stance, others simply put the phone down when challenged.

O'Brien also admits to having his own thoughtlessness in relation to gendered behaviour challenged and changed by the women in his life - and you have to love someone open enough to recognise their own privileged and, thus, implicated position in a patriarchy.

There are serious political, social and cultural issues under discussion here - but O'Brien is funny and honest, acute and, you know, sensible. This could have been a book that is depressing to read as there's just so much hatred and ignorance and ill-nature in the people who call up O'Brien's show - but his passion and generosity, his wit and intelligence in the widest sense make it both entertaining and compensatory.