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.
