Reader Trust

In How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor, Foster emphasizes time and again that reader trust is the foundation upon which nonfiction literature rests. Without it, nonfiction as a genre is threatened, nonfiction writers jobless, and numerous media such as news television programs and newspapers obsolete. Thus, the entirety of his book is aimed at developing critical reading skills in the reader so as to allow readers to feel confident in the information they consume. Without that confidence – called reader trust in this guide – the world of nonfiction becomes useless, since readers will be unlikely to desire to educate themselves by taking someone else at their word, instead choosing to be cynical and deny even the good information out there.

Foster’s concern manifests many times in this book in the form of a discussion on American politics. He acknowledges that his home country’s ideological divisions...