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

Written by Thomas C. Foster

Narrated by David de Vries

The New York Times bestselling author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor uses the same skills to teach how to access accurate information in a rapidly changing 24/7 news cycle and become better readers, thinkers, and consumers of media.

We live in an information age, but it is increasingly difficult to know which information to trust. Fake news is rampant in mass media, stoked by foreign powers wishing to disrupt a democratic society. We need to be more perceptive, more critical, and more judicious readers. The future of our republic may depend on it. 

How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor is more careful, more attentive, more aware reading. On bookstore shelves, one book looks as authoritative as the next. Online, posts and memes don’t announce their relative veracity. It is up to readers to establish how accurate, how thorough, how fair material may be. 

After laying out general principles of reading nonfiction, How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor offers advice for specific reading strategies in various genres from histories and biographies to science and technology to social media. Throughout, the emphasis will be on understanding writers’ biases, interrogating claims, analyzing arguments, remaining wary of broad assertions and easy answers, and thinking critically about the written and spoken materials readers encounter. We can become better citizens through better reading, and the time for that is now.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: May 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9780063009905

Thomas C. Foster

Thomas C. Foster is the author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, How to Write Like a Writer, How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor, and other works. He is professor emeritus of English at the University of Michigan, Flint, where he taught classes in contemporary fiction, drama, and poetry as well as creative writing and freelance writing. He is also the author of several books on twentieth-century British and Irish literature and poetry.

Reviews for How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor

[hardlyhardy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have been a fan of Thomas C. Foster's "Professor" books since “How to Read Literature Like a Professor,” but he may have reached the limits of his expertise with “How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor” (2020).Partly it's a matter of nonfiction being such a broad topic, including everything from biography, history, politics and science to newspapers, magazines and blogs. It's not easy being an authority on everything. Another problem is that Foster's book, being itself nonfiction, doesn't always conform to the author's guidance on what constitutes good nonfiction.For example, Foster writes, "I have long counseled students of fiction to start doubting the narrator's veracity if they see the word 'I' on the first page. ... The same is true of nonfiction." I am probably not the only reader to check back at the beginning of his own book. His introduction begins with the word "I." His first chapter begins with the word "I'm." (Note that this review also begins with the word "I.")More serious is the professor's lecturing on objectivity or, more accurately, the lack of objectivity. He offers a lot of good instruction on how to detect an author's particular slant and judge the accuracy of statements. But then Foster himself sometimes often fails the objectivity and accuracy tests. For example, he slams Fox News repeatedly, including by saying the network "does virtually no actual news gathering, relying much more on opinion shows ..." A more objective and accurate writer might also point out that other news networks, including CNN, MSNBC and Newsmax, also depend mostly on opinion shows. And the "virtually no actual news gathering" comment is just blatantly wrong.Foster criticizes the "fake news" label popularized by President Trump, yet he is all aboard with the misinformation and disinformation terms employed more by those on the left. Many readers may find it hard to tell the difference, other than by the political views of those telling the untruths. The author favors cracking down on misinformation and disinformation, especially in the cyber world. The problem is that most fact-checkers, being themselves biased, also need fact-checkers. And what starts out as fact-checking can easily transform into censorship.Foster shines in many of the chapters in this book, even if he stumbles in others.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a book that one needs to read more than once, a book to own. Since, a few years back, I started reading more nonfiction, I have had questions. How do we know that what we read is factual. How can biographies for the same person, have a different interpretation of the materials to be found. Why do some books have such lengthy introductions? With do many biased news mediums how do we know which ones are actually doing due diligence on their facts. These are just some of the questions that were well answered in this book. The Washington Post gets a high rating for their reporting, and Fox news is likened to the National Enquirer. Do I need to say more?He covers online sources, social media, nonfiction, autobiographys and biographies, memoirs, new journalism, creative non fiction, and political and presidential treatsies. Explains how biases are hard to overcome, seems people want to believe what they want to believe. Go figure! Facts that don't fit their views are disregarded. The Advent if fake news, or alternate facts. As I said much is covered, easily explained, even some wry humor, but in the end it is up to the reader. Check sources and be open minded, not stuck in a bias. This is the onlyGareth Russell has chosen a handful of passengers on the doomed liner and by training a spotlight on every detail of their lives, he has given us a meticulous, sensitive, and at times harsh picture of the early 20th century in Britain and America. A marvelous piece of work.” —Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton AbbeyA riveting account of the Titanic disaster and the unraveling of the gilded Edwardian society that had created it. way to be truly, but more accurately, informed.