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

Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor: A Smart, Irreverent Guide to Biography, History, Journalism, Blogs, and Everything in Between (2019) invites readers to approach nonfiction with the same critical awareness that they typically apply to other literature. A longtime English professor, Foster is best known for his How to Read Like a Professor series, which demystifies the analytical tools of close reading. The series began in 2003 with the best-selling How to Read Literature Like a Professor. In this companion volume, he turns these tools toward nonfiction, blending literary analysis, rhetorical theory, and contemporary media critique. Foster combines humor with scholarship, examining forms ranging from journalism and biography to memoir and opinion writing, guiding readers to recognize structure, bias, and persuasion in everyday texts. Through its accessible prose and timely insights, the book encourages readers to balance skepticism with trust and cultivate critical literacy, which are skills that are essential for navigating a world saturated with information and misinformation alike.

This guide refers to the 2020 e-book edition published by Harper Perennial.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of child sexual abuse and sexual violence.

Summary

In How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor, Foster applies his trademark wit and clarity to the question of how to approach nonfiction critically. While his earlier book How to Read Literature Like a Professor illuminated the patterns of fiction, this companion volume tackles the artistry of factual writing. Part primer, part cultural critique, and part call to civic responsibility, the book traces nonfiction’s diverse forms, its rhetorical strategies, and the moral obligation of readers to separate truth from deceit in an era of information overload.

Foster opens with a blunt premise: “We live in an age of deliberate deception” (ix). This opening claim establishes the urgency of his project. Drawing an analogy between modern media and a drugstore filled with bottles, some of which contain poison pills, he argues that the challenge of nonfiction reading lies in discernment. Deception, he insists, is not a modern invention but a recurring feature of public discourse. From the partisan press of the early US republic to the “yellow journalism” of the late 19th century, Foster demonstrates that lies, propaganda, and distortion have long shaped how people understand reality. What has changed, he argues, is the scale and speed at which misinformation proliferates.

Throughout the Preface and Introduction, Foster positions his book as a remedy to cultural cynicism. He urges readers to occupy the space between naive belief and total disbelief. By framing critical literacy as a skill that can be learned, he distinguishes between skepticism (a virtue) and cynicism (a hindrance). From this foundation, Foster moves into the structural and rhetorical dimensions of nonfiction: how writers build authority, construct arguments, and establish trust.

In the early chapters, Foster provides guidance on nonfiction’s internal architecture. He introduces the “Four Ps” (problem, promise, program, and platform) as a formula that shapes the opening of most long-form nonfiction. These elements define what issue a book addresses, what it promises to deliver, how it plans to do so, and why the author deserves readers’ trust. To illustrate structure in practice, Foster examines narrative nonfiction such as Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit and Daniel James Brown’s The Boys in the Boat, showing how both weave multiple storylines into coherent thematic arcs. He argues that every writer works from a design and that understanding this design helps readers grasp the logic beneath the narrative surface.

Additionally, Foster teaches readers to pay close attention to forewords, prefaces, introductions, and prologues. Though many tend to skip these sections, they guide interpretation and signal tone, intention, and credibility. For example, a preface by the author differs in purpose from a foreword by another expert; both, however, are springboards into the main text. From there, Foster demystifies other components of books (title pages, acknowledgments, tables of contents, notes, and bibliographies), showing that each contributes to transparency and authority.

After examining how nonfiction is structured, Foster explores how it argues. Drawing on philosopher Stephen Toulmin’s The Uses of Argument, he defines claims, grounds, and warrants as the backbone of persuasive writing. Through this framework, he teaches readers to test logic, evaluate evidence, and identify faulty reasoning. He emphasizes that nearly all nonfiction presents an argument, whether explicit or implicit. Understanding that argument and the techniques used to advance it enables readers to distinguish analysis from advocacy and fact from manipulation.

In addition, Foster looks at genres that blend subjectivity and reportage: participatory journalism, new journalism, and creative nonfiction. Writers such as Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Joan Didion, and John McPhee demonstrate how nonfiction can borrow literary techniques such as scene, dialogue, and metaphor while remaining grounded in truth. By analyzing these authors’ differing levels of personal involvement, Foster illuminates nonfiction’s flexibility. Essays and opinion writing, he adds, reveal the writer’s worldview most directly, making tone and bias especially important for readers to recognize.

The author also explores the impact of bias. He insists that while “none of us can ever be wholly aware of our slants” (62), self-awareness and honesty can mitigate distortion. Foster trains readers to spot linguistic cues that indicate rhetorical tilt. His examples range from political op-eds to scientific research, reminding readers that bias appears not only in ideology but also in framing and emphasis. He states that the remedy is not blind trust or rejection but alert engagement.

In later chapters, Foster applies his principles to case studies in political writing. Examining Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, James Comey’s A Higher Loyalty, and Bob Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House, he contrasts differing journalistic ethics and narrative voices. Wolff’s book, he argues, is “incendiary” since it is heavy on gossip and light on attribution, while Woodward’s meticulous sourcing makes Fear more reliable but less sensational. The comparison dramatizes Foster’s larger point that credibility depends not on subject matter but on transparency, evidence, and tone.

The author further widens his scope in his chapters on science writing and the digital age. Writers such as Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Malcolm Gladwell demonstrate how nonfiction can translate complex ideas for general audiences. However, science writing, Foster warns, now contends with a cultural backdrop of skepticism and misinformation. He introduces the concept of defensive reading (approaching texts with both curiosity and caution) and encourages readers to interrogate authors, sources, data, and arguments using the same checklists that editors and researchers do.

This practical advice culminates in Foster’s critique of the internet and social media. The rise of “dark information,” he argues, has transformed the nonfiction landscape entirely. Platforms that once promised democratization now amplify disinformation, valuing virality over veracity. Through satire and hyperbole—imagining social media companies consigned to a “special circle of Hell” (259)—Foster captures the moral stakes of the digital age. Misinformation, he suggests, functions like a disease: It spreads by contact, mutates quickly, and thrives on neglect, and the antidote is vigilance.

Next, Foster confronts deliberate bad-faith writing: hoaxes, forgeries, and falsified data. Examples range from fabricated memoirs such as James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces to fraudulent journalism and manipulated scientific studies. He cites Andrew Wakefield’s discredited vaccine research and Stephen Moore’s economic distortions as cases in which misinformation caused tangible harm. In a crescendo of moral outrage, Foster concludes that such falsehoods “contaminate” the entire information ecosystem, slowing scientific progress, costing lives, and eroding democratic trust.

The book ends on a note of cautious optimism. In the final chapter, Foster moves from mechanical guidelines to imaginative empathy, calling on readers to become “cocreators of meaning” (301). Reading critically, he argues, must also mean reading humanely: acknowledging one’s perspective while engaging generously with others. By bringing both intellect and imagination to nonfiction, readers can resist cynicism and restore trust to a fractured public discourse.