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

Foster explores subjective nonfiction, centering on participatory journalism and creative nonfiction (both defined by the author’s presence in their writing). He begins with “new journalism,” which emerged in the 1960s as a means of challenging the impersonal tone of conventional reporting. Writers such as Truman Capote (In Cold Blood), Norman Mailer (The Armies of the Night), Hunter S. Thompson (Hell’s Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), and Tom Wolfe (The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) transformed journalism by incorporating literary techniques that are traditionally associated with fiction.

Foster situates Thompson and Wolfe at opposite ends of new journalism. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas—a “drug-fueled romp through the scene in Vegas: loud, profane, crude, hilarious” (123)—embodies the extreme of self-immersion, wherein the author’s persona dominates the narrative. Wolfe, by contrast, aims to render the “inner lives” of his subjects through techniques like free indirect speech, a narrative mode borrowed from fiction that blends the author’s voice with the subject’s consciousness. In Foster’s view, both writers exemplify new journalism’s power to “ferret out” fascinating details about their subjects.

Next, Foster turns to Joan Didion, whom he calls a “problem child” of the movement. Critics such as Barbara Grizzuti Harrison have accused Didion of excessive introspection, labeling her “neurasthenic,” but Foster views her distinct detachment as deliberate. He notes that her works resist easy categorization, thus broadening the boundaries of subjective nonfiction.

Foster observes a “peacock quality” among some new journalists who foreground themselves for stylistic effect, but he praises John McPhee as the antithesis of this tendency. In Basin and Range, McPhee combines meticulous research with accessible explanation, transforming abstract geology into a compelling narrative. His restraint (seeking expert consultation and minimizing personal opinion) illustrates that authority in nonfiction arises from humility.

Foster turns to creative nonfiction, which he calls the “newcomer” among subjective forms. He identifies precursors, such as James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, Ernest Hemingway’s nonfiction, and especially Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Dillard’s book, written in a novelistic style and set over the course of a year, examines her perspective on “seeing” the natural world around her. In Foster’s view, Dillard’s work raises a guiding question for all nonfiction: “What is the author talking about, and why does she express it as she does?” (138).

He concludes by contrasting McPhee and Dillard as representing opposite ends of the creative writing spectrum: repertorial and autobiographical. The author reminds readers that humans have long been concerned with writing about the self and that modern practitioners refine it through the narrative tools of fiction.

Foster next discusses the essay and opinion writing, two closely related forms of nonfiction that foreground the writer’s perspective. He distinguishes the personal essay from the rigid version taught in schools. Essays, he explains, are “adaptable” and have existed for centuries. Tracing the form’s history, he credits Michel de Montaigne, Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, and Aldous Huxley for their contributions to the field. The essay’s popularity has fluctuated across literary eras; it thrived in the Romantic and Victorian periods, declined during Modernism, and resurged through diverse contemporary voices such as Alice Walker, bell hooks, Ta-Nehisi Coates, N. Scott Momaday, and Janet Campbell Hale.

Foster observes that the essayist’s personality is integral to the form: “[T]he essay must fit the writer like a suit” (143). In early modern Europe, this self-expression was revolutionary. The essay became the vehicle of independent thought through which the Enlightenment progressed, carried forward by thinkers such as John Locke, Adam Smith, Voltaire, and Immanuel Kant.

Next, the author explores the essay’s modern diversity, contrasting the works of Julian Barnes and Christopher Hitchens (a “professional contrarian” whose argumentative essays popularized the phrase “Hitch-slapped”). In contrast, the works of Marilynne Robinson exemplify a contemplative style. Foster insists that all essays share a “clear” and “unique” thesis statement, which may appear at any point in an essay. To help readers approach essays critically, he suggests that they ask three questions: What was the author’s intent, did they succeed, and was it worth it?

The chapter then transitions to opinion writing. In the 18th century, opinion writing was indistinguishable from essay writing, but modern opinion writing (columns, op-eds, commentary) has evolved into a distinct form. Foster surveys a range of American opinion writers, from earlier humorists like Will Rogers, Herb Caen, and Erma Bombeck to contemporary voices such as Mitch Albom, Mona Charen, Jonah Goldberg, Clarence Page, and Michelle Malkin. Good opinion writing, he argues, demands “argumentative fairness”—an honest engagement with opposing views. Foster notes the tendency of newspapers to feature two opposing opinion columns, reflecting the binary logic of the US two-party system.

To read opinion writing critically, Foster supplies a practical series of guiding questions, prompting readers to ask if the presented “facts” align with reality, if the source is reliable, if facts and quotes are used accurately, and if the arguments support claims or depend on readers sharing the writer’s bias.

He concludes by reiterating how opinion writing and essays are immensely personal. Both forms expose the writer’s perspective and personality, which, he argues, “[w]e need more of” (158).

Foster then examines autobiographies and memoirs. While these genres may appear to be the “truest” type of nonfiction, he cautions that self-representation can be as unreliable as fictional narration. Just as characters in novels like Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita lack self-awareness, autobiographers and memoirists may distort their own stories. He distinguishes between the two genres through their scope and intent, calling autobiographies a “special kind of biography” that is “written from the inside,” while “memoir […] derives from the French for memory or reminiscence” and “is under no obligation to cover the memoirist’s birth or wedding or appendectomy” (160). Autobiographies generally strive for comprehensive life accounts, while memoirs focus on specific periods or themes. For instance, Thoreau’s Walden and Beryl Markham’s West With the Night are memoirs, limited in scope and rich in reflection.

Exploring the history of the form, Foster looks to Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin as a foundational contribution and asks whether autobiographies have always been “sketchy.” He argues that self-portrayal has long been subjective. Tracing a lineage from Saint Augustine’s Confessions to John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Latin for Defense of His Life), Foster observes how religious and philosophical autobiography shaped modern self-writing.

Foster identifies two contemporary heirs to this tradition, politicians and musicians, whose autobiographies seek self-justification or mythmaking rather than spiritual enlightenment. He notes that all autobiographies are inherently incomplete since they end before the author’s life does. However, he does note the existence of “death memoirs,” a modern subgenre that contemplates mortality. Works such as Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air, Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow’s “The Last Lecture,” Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights, and Joyce Carol Oates’s A Widow’s Story exemplify writers confronting death. In addition, Foster addresses the “shadow” of Franklin’s influence on later autobiographical work. He praises Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me as a powerful example of this approach.

The author ends the chapter by arguing that autobiography and memoir offer more than personal confession. Both genres, when read attentively, reveal broader cultural and philosophical insights.

Foster divides nonfiction into two temporal categories: “Now” and “Everything Before Now” (173). Contemporary nonfiction deals with present-day events and living subjects, while historical nonfiction reconstructs the past. Using Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers and David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon as examples, Foster contrasts firsthand access with historical distance. He distinguishes between primary and secondary resources, noting that contemporary works often rely on primary sources (such as interviews, eyewitness accounts, and observation), while historical nonfiction depends on secondary sources like documents, archives, and previous scholarship. Both are vital to the preservation and interpretation of human experience.

He examines how histories come in “various denominations,” contrasting the sweeping narrative of Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage with the “mosaic approach” of David McCullough’s 1776 and Tom Brokaw’s The Greatest Generation. In addition, Foster observes that many histories use specific years in their titles, such as 1913, which has been used by authors Florian Illies, Charles Emmerson, Oliver DeMille, and Paul Ham. By concentrating on specific time periods, these writers illustrate how structure and scale determine how readers engage with history.

Likening publishing to a “fashion business,” Foster notes that earlier generations of historians and biographers focused on “great” men and their “acts.” By the late 20th century, a cultural shift, spurred in part by second-wave feminism, expanded the biographical canon to include women and other figures associated with “great” men. The wives of famous men, such as Zelda Fitzgerald (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife) and Nora Barnacle (James Joyce’s wife), became the subjects of biographies. This trend has continued into the 21st century in works like Brenda Maddox’s Rosalind Franklin, Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife, and Whitney Scharer’s The Age of Light.

Foster reflects on why readers still need history and biography. Contrary to the cliché that history repeats itself, he contends that these genres matter because they help readers interpret the present.

Foster turns to political nonfiction, tracing a lineage of major political thinkers (Niccolò Machiavelli, Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, James Madison, John Jay, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels) whose works shaped governance and ideology. Acknowledging the vastness of the subject, the author narrows his focus to the surge of politically charged books following the 2016 US presidential election. He concentrates on three bestsellers that embody different approaches to political writing: Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty, and Bob Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House.

Foster calls Fire and Fury an “incendiary” work that is “full of self-justifications, backbiting, gossip, envy, and dubious grasps on reality” (189). While its detractors have dismissed it as fiction, others argue that reputable sources corroborate many of its events. Political commentators such as David Brooks and E. J. Dionne debated the book’s credibility on National Public Radio, while Fox News sought to discredit it, focusing on Wolff’s brief interview time with Trump and Sean Hannity’s denial of alleged coordination. Foster acknowledges the uncertainty around such claims, asking whether a minor factual error invalidates the work as a whole. He concludes that it does not, though Wolff’s lack of attribution and reliance on hearsay undermine his credibility. Foster criticizes that political readers often interpret evidence through ideological filters. He attributes this polarization to the “Great Leveling of Information.” Fire and Fury’s speculative passages illustrate the hazards of omniscient narration in nonfiction. Foster commends Wolff’s honesty in admitting, within his author’s note, that much of the material came from secondhand accounts. Still, he concludes that “everyone who touches this book must pronounce judgment,” and his own is severe: “a plague on all their houses” (198). Foster criticizes both Wolff’s method and his subjects, describing them as “sycophants” and “self-aggrandizers,” but he clarifies that unreliability does not always equate to falsehood. The lesson, he notes, is that trustworthy nonfiction depends on verifiable sources and transparent attribution.

Foster next examines Comey’s A Higher Loyalty, which he categorizes as a ”bystander chronicle,” a memoir that intertwines personal experience with public controversy. The book recounts Comey’s interactions with Trump and the events surrounding his dismissal as FBI director. Foster contextualizes its reception. Republicans dismissed it as partisan, while Democrats remained resentful over Comey’s handling of Hillary Clinton’s emails. Despite the tension, the memoir became a bestseller. Foster, however, cautions against judging the book by its sales, instead encouraging readers to assess its style, structure, and rhetorical choices. Calling Comey’s prose “stolid,” Foster praises his attention to logic and careful attribution but critiques his rhetorical evasions. Comey, he argues, “funks it rhetorically” by using passive voice to distance himself from responsibility (206), particularly in his discussions of Clinton’s “reckless” email practices and Russian interference. Applying Ezra Pound’s evaluative criteria for literature, Foster quips that readers must decide for themselves whether A Higher Loyalty was “worth doing.”

Finally, Foster turns to Woodward’s Fear. Comparing it to Fire and Fury, he notes that Woodward’s book is more disciplined, “scrupulous” in its sourcing, and methodical in tone. However, its revelations are less sensational, as many of the events had already been reported. The book’s credibility, he argues, stems from its restraint: “The truly new or surprising material is in a sense indemnified against doubt by the way so much of the book merely ratifies general knowledge” (215). Foster’s comparison underscores the range of political nonfiction (from speculative exposé to bureaucratic chronicle) and the trade-off between immediacy and rigor.

Foster reiterates that 2018 saw numerous political memoirs, noting that Michelle Obama’s Becoming was the best-selling political memoir of the year. He attributes this, potentially, to Obama’s optimistic tone in comparison to her more negative contemporaries.

Foster begins his discussion of science writing by observing a paradox: We live in both a golden age of scientific communication and a culture of anti-science sentiment. Since the 1970s, a wave of acclaimed science writers (including Carl Sagan, Brian Greene, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, Jane Goodall, Stephen Jay Gould, Lewis Thomas, Oliver Sacks, Steven Pinker, and Noam Chomsky) has brought complex scientific ideas to general audiences. This, Foster notes, is the “good news.” The “bad news” is that much of the American public remains skeptical of science. Although this resistance is less common abroad and represents a minority of Americans, it is, he writes, a “vocal” one. The result is that science writers operate under pressure, sometimes appearing “peevish” as they push back against misinformation and ideological hostility.

Foster identifies three main categories of science writing: expert testimony, such as Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, wherein a specialist explains discoveries within their field; amateur profile, represented by works like Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures, which dramatize scientific progress through the lives of individuals; and journalistic compilation, such as Cathy N. Davidson’s Now You See It, which synthesizes existing research for broad readership. Foster emphasizes that “science writing relies on expertise” but that even expertise must be read critically (222).

Addressing accessibility and communication, Foster argues that not all scientists are skilled communicators, though some, such as Neil deGrasse Tyson, excel at making complex topics digestible. Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry demonstrates how clarity and enthusiasm can make specialized knowledge widely accessible. However, the author warns readers not to conflate readability with reliability. Science writing, like all nonfiction, must be read with discernment, a practice he terms “defensive reading.”

Defensive reading, he explains, means refusing to take claims at face value and maintaining skepticism without descending into cynicism. Readers must “interrogate the text” (230). He introduces a systematic approach to interrogation through guiding questions that assess engagement, argument, evidence, reliability, and logic. He frames this approach as intellectual self-defense and time management, insisting that life is too short to spend reading works that are careless or misleading. To illustrate what this looks like in practice, Foster cites John McPhee’s Draft No. 4, describing how McPhee’s editor questioned every article draft. Readers, Foster suggests, should adopt this editorial stance, questioning how the author of a nonfiction text knows what they claim to know. Responsible authors, he notes, often make their sources clear within the text; however, he recognizes that readers cannot realistically verify every source, so he recommends focusing on linguistic cues that signal speculation.

Foster then provides a series of checklists for evaluating nonfiction. The checklists guide readers through interrogating the author, sources, data, argument, and bias within nonfiction writing.