How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor: A Smart, Irreverent Guide to Biography, History, Journalism, Blogs, and Everything in Between

Foster suggests that readers “think like a writer” to become better readers (9). Long-form nonfiction, he explains, opens with a “hook” that earns attention and sets up the work’s essentials. He outlines the “Four Ps” (problem, promise, program, and platform) as the blueprint that many writers use. The writer identifies a need (problem), assures readers that it can be addressed (promise), previews the method (program), and establishes credibility (platform).

Because nonfiction can be narrative, expository, argumentative, informational, or a blend, readers should pay attention not only to what a book says but also to its structural design. Returning to the examples of Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit and Brown’s The Boys in the Boat, Foster shows how multistrand narratives develop several principal figures and contexts in alternating chapters. This pattern balances character development, historical background, and pacing, preventing “reader burnout” by varying threads rather than dwelling too long on any single hardship. Foster emphasizes that structural choices redirect a book’s telos, or goal, by deepening context, distributing focus across key players, and managing readers’ emotional load.

Turning to non-narrative designs, Foster examines David Brooks’s 2015 book