When conservative host Bill O'Reilly bashed author and journalist Rick Perlstein on television, the writer (pictured via K.A. Westphal) woke up with some vicious hate mail from readers--like an Anti-Book Club.

In a Newsweek essay, Perlstein, author of the 2008 book, "Nixonland The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America," describes what happens after O'Reilly criticizes a writer. As we noted yesterday, the television host rules a powerful author platform, and the article gives a glimpse into the anger simmering in his audience.

Here's more, as Perlstein describes the televised take-down: "O'Reilly had run a segment on an article I published in the July 20 Newsweek, along with a picture--my author photograph--and a description of me--'this Perlstein,' who had written 'some book no one heard of,' spit out with such venom that more than one friend of mine thought of Sasha Baron Cohen's Borat singing about throwing a Jew down a well."