62 pages • 2-hour read
How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor: A Smart, Irreverent Guide to Biography, History, Journalism, Blogs, and Everything in Between
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Themes
Rhetorical Strategies as Hidden Persuasion
Foster demystifies the rhetorical strategies that underpin nonfiction writing, yet his own prose reveals how these same devices can persuade readers. His book is both an exposé of rhetorical technique and a demonstration of it, illustrating that even works devoted to truth depend on persuasion. By modeling transparency, humor, and clarity, the author transforms rhetoric from a manipulative tool into a form of intellectual honesty.
From the opening line, “We live in an age of deliberate deception” (ix), Foster establishes urgency through hyperbole and direct address. His voice combines authority and accessibility, balancing ethos and pathos in the classical sense. Rhetorically, the sentence functions as both a hook and a claim, dramatizing the stakes of the book’s subject while positioning the author as a trustworthy guide through the chaos. This line foreshadows his larger argument that every nonfiction text, no matter how factual, arranges information to move readers toward a conclusion. What distinguishes ethical nonfiction from propaganda, he insists, is awareness of both the writer’s methods and one’s reactions to them.
Foster’s own methods reveal his mastery of persuasive technique. His use of analogy (such as comparing misinformation to “poison pills” in a drugstore or to a spreading “infection”) translates abstract ideas into visceral images. These metaphors make complex concepts about epistemology and media ethics accessible to general readers, fulfilling his pedagogical goal without diluting rigor. His humor likewise functions rhetorically, softening resistance to critical self-reflection. When he jokes about the internet as a “cradle for the World Wide Web, which begat mayhem” (246), the biblical parody invites laughter but also embeds moral critique. Like the authors he analyzes, Foster manipulates tone to win goodwill before delivering hard truths.
Equally important is the author’s deliberate use of structure. By organizing chapters around familiar genres, including biography, history, journalism, and science writing, he uses categorical logic to create coherence and trust. This strategy mirrors what he identifies in skilled nonfiction writers: the establishment of a “program” and “platform” that help readers navigate an argument. His bolded imperatives, such as “[a]ct like an editor” (248), and checklists for evaluating claims mimic the textual features of digital media, visually engaging readers while reinforcing key concepts. The result is a hybrid of instruction and performance, in which the form of the book models the very rhetorical principles it teaches.
In addition, Foster exposes how rhetoric can mask bias. In chapters on political writing, he unpacks devices such as selective sourcing, emotionally charged diction, and narrative framing. By analyzing examples like Fire and Fury and A Higher Loyalty, he shows that even ostensibly factual books use literary strategies (e.g., dialogue, pacing, metaphor) to shape readers’ judgments. However, Foster’s critique never dismisses rhetoric outright; instead, he reframes it as an inevitable aspect of communication. The goal, he argues, is not to escape persuasion but to recognize and evaluate it.
Foster’s rhetorical transparency models the ethics he advocates. His humor, direct address, and self-awareness invite collaboration rather than compliance, making readers partners in interpretation. Thus, How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor embodies this theme. Rhetorical strategy need not hide persuasion; when used responsibly, it reveals how truth can be both argued and earned.
The Role of Skepticism and Trust in Reading Nonfiction
At the heart of How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor lies an apparent paradox: To read well, one must question relentlessly yet still be capable of belief. Foster constructs his book around the tension between skepticism and trust, presenting them not as opposites but as complementary forces that define the ethics of reading. He warns that cynicism (the total loss of trust) is as dangerous as gullibility because it leads to disengagement. Both extremes disable understanding and threaten the foundation of truth in public life. The goal, he argues, is not disbelief but discernment.
Foster establishes distrust as the necessary starting point for modern readers. Historical references to yellow journalism, political propaganda, and corporate misinformation reveal that manipulation is not new, only amplified. However, even as he documents deceit, the author resists nihilism. He reminds readers that most nonfiction writers act in good faith and that critical reading allows people to separate error from intent. This balance reflects Foster’s central conviction: Skepticism should function as inquiry, not accusation.
Foster’s treatment of trust evolves alongside his discussion of genre. In journalism, he celebrates figures such as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose book All the President’s Men exemplifies verification and accountability. Their work, he argues, rests on the social contract between writer and reader: the assumption that the reporter has sought truth with integrity. By contrast, scandals like Stephen Glass’s fabrications and James Frey’s fraudulent memoir expose what happens when that contract collapses. These examples dramatize how every nonfiction act, whether an investigative report or a personal essay, depends on earned credibility.
In the book’s later chapters, trust becomes a civic concern. Foster’s discussion of social media, “fake news,” and algorithmic bias reframes literacy as a democratic skill. The reader must become what he calls an “editor,” interrogating information rather than accepting it wholesale. The internet, where “truth and lie look exactly alike” (247), transforms trust from an instinct into a discipline. However, Foster’s sarcasm and humor keep this message from hardening into despair. His mock-serious vision of a “special circle of Hell” for misinformation both condemns deception and reaffirms faith in readers’ ability to resist it (259).
By the conclusion, the author restores trust through imagination. Encouraging “imaginative reading,” he argues that empathy and curiosity help counter cynicism’s paralysis. To trust a text to the extent that one can commit to reading it critically is to engage with it fully. In this synthesis of reason and imagination, Foster locates reading’s moral center. Skepticism, properly guided, protects us from deceit; trust, properly earned, allows meaning to flourish.
Empowering Readers Through Critical Literacy
Foster positions critical literacy as both a method of reading and a form of personal empowerment. To read critically is not to distrust knowledge but to participate in it and recognize that meaning emerges through collaboration between writer and reader. Throughout the book, the author reframes reading from a passive act of absorption into an active process of questioning, connecting, and judging. He transforms literacy from a mechanical skill into an ethical practice, arguing that informed readers safeguard not only themselves but also the integrity of democracy.
Foster builds this theme incrementally. Early chapters provide the mechanics of comprehension: identifying a writer’s purpose, analyzing structure, and testing claims. However, as the book unfolds, these exercises take on moral weight. In introducing the philosopher Stephen Toulmin’s model of argument (claims, grounds, and warrants), Foster translates academic logic into a civic skill. Readers who understand how arguments are built, he suggests, can also recognize how they are misused. This framework transforms reading from an academic exercise into an act of self-defense in an information economy designed to overwhelm and persuade.
As the scope widens to political and scientific nonfiction, the stakes of literacy become social. Foster’s analyses of the books Fire and Fury, A Higher Loyalty, and Fear show readers how to evaluate evidence, tone, and bias without succumbing to partisanship. His insistence that “we owe it to writers to observe their standards for the narrative or argument they pursue” underscores his respect for intellectual fairness (206). Critical literacy, Foster asserts, is not combative but constructive; it requires humility as well as discernment.
This ethic extends to his critique of the digital world. The internet’s “Great Leveling,” wherein expertise and opinion share equal footing, tests readers’ ability to navigate a realm without editors or accountability. Foster’s imperative to “[a]ct like an editor” redefines authority as a distributed responsibility (248). Readers become the new gatekeepers, tasked with distinguishing reliable information from “dark information.” The author’s humorous quip about “cat videos and Nigerian princes” disarms anxiety while emphasizing the practical benefits of skepticism (244). Empowerment, he reminds readers, comes from competence, not cynicism.
Foster’s conclusion elevates critical literacy beyond defense into creativity. His call for “imaginative reading” invites readers to become “cocreators of meaning” (301), combining logic with empathy to form a fuller understanding of truth. By merging critical thought with imaginative openness, the author positions literacy as a lifelong practice of engagement. Empowered readers, he argues, do more than identify deception; they sustain the intellectual and moral infrastructure of an informed society.
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