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

“We need to come out of our silos. Open the doors and come out into the air and the light. Hack through a wall and make a door if necessary. Expand our horizons. Understand that divergent viewpoints can be valid. That sympathetic viewpoints can be false. And that we need to be able to discern the difference.”

Foster ends the Preface with a call to intellectual and moral action, urging readers to break free from ideological confinement. The extended metaphor of the silo dramatizes isolation, while the imperative verbs (“open,” “hack,” “expand”) convey urgency and empowerment. The line invites readers to reject tribalism and practice discernment rather than dogmatic loyalty.

“Let’s suppose that the worst thing you can do when reading nonfiction is to believe that everything you read is true. What’s the second worst? Not believing any of it.”

Through hypophora, Foster balances skepticism and trust, dramatizing a reader’s dilemma in a world of partial truths. His plain, conversational phrasing conceals the philosophical claim that uncritical faith and total disbelief (or cynicism) are equally destructive. The remark thematically encapsulates The Role of Skepticism and Trust in Reading Nonfiction, emphasizing that critical thinking requires both openness and restraint.

“That’s why the hook, that rhetorical or narrative gambit, is there at the front, something to win the readers’ goodwill and buy a little space to lay out the essentials of the work to follow.”

Foster explicitly defines the hook as a deliberate rhetorical strategy, exemplifying Rhetorical Strategies as Hidden Persuasion. He reveals how effective nonfiction builds reader trust through craft rather than content alone. His tone models the accessibility that he advocates, framing rhetorical technique as both an art and a readerly expectation.