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blaineduncan's review against another edition
3.0
Foster is light and breezy, sometimes to a fault. But at least he's never a slog to get through. Most of the information shared here should be obvious. A lot of times he fails at teaching how to read nonfiction and instead spends massive amounts of time explaining what the author wrote about and/or how the subject or author was wrong. That's fine, but this one isn't as instructive as his previous works on reading. It needed more ideas on analysis of nonfiction, much like his books on fiction did.
unladylike's review against another edition
2.0
Professor Foster at one point mentions that journalists almost never get to decide the headlines published with their articles, but writers of nonfiction books do choose their titles, and must bear the responsibility of living up to it. It is ironic, then, that this book fails that test. I think the title starts with "How to" to identify it as part of a series of other books by the same author, dealing with poetry, literature, etc. Rather than learning how to read nonfiction more critically, I simply learned about this particular affluent, liberal, white man's opinions on a long list of different writers and political realms. While I happen to agree with most of the opinions he espouses, that is not what I was looking for in this book.
This book is actually an anthology of reviews of best selling books and thus, of their authors. There were a few tidbits that might be helpful to my own writing, such as not starting any sentences on the first page of a memoir with "I," but otherwise it was only useful to help me decide whether or not to read some particular other books. If you're a similarly positioned baby boomer fond of the words "bamboozled" and "hoodwinked," you might enjoy Foster's most recent "How to Read ... " book.
This book is actually an anthology of reviews of best selling books and thus, of their authors. There were a few tidbits that might be helpful to my own writing, such as not starting any sentences on the first page of a memoir with "I," but otherwise it was only useful to help me decide whether or not to read some particular other books. If you're a similarly positioned baby boomer fond of the words "bamboozled" and "hoodwinked," you might enjoy Foster's most recent "How to Read ... " book.
rebelqueen's review against another edition
2.0
Not as good as How to Read Literature like a Professor. There are some good reminders in here, but it’s all pretty basic. Make sure your sources are credible. Make sure your credible sources use credible sources.
gorgeousgirl's review against another edition
it was okay i guess. written for laymen so not super useful to me having already been thru the wringer of uni. idk if my audiobook glitched & rewinded or if there truly was an interminable screed abt a journo who wrote abt the Trump whitehouse it went on forever i get ittttt
arthur_pendrgn's review against another edition
2.0
The folksy tone as disappeared and I lost the sense that he was speaking to his students. An over-reliance on a finite set of books does not help matters--if you haven't read McPhee or Ambrose, most of this book won't clear matters up. This is part history of nonfiction, part structure of nonfiction, part critical reading of nonfiction (although not until late in the book), part diatribe. The book is worth a read--the cogent information can provide insight. However, other than the fact that I agree with Foster's review of the Trump-based texts of Woodward and Wolff alongside Michelle Obama and Comey, not much useful until I got to the end.
holodoxa's review against another edition
2.0
I am a fan of Thomas C. Foster's How to Read... Like a Professor and especially his 25 Books that Shaped America even when they were guilty of simplification or superficial analysis, but those prior weakness were amplified in this book. This would be fine given that this work is probably targeted at high school and early college students, but there are just superior options, such as Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book. There are also works that are more technical and for pedagogical purposes like Everything's an Argument by John Ruszkiewicz and Keith Walters, which provide greater detail about how effective claims are structured and how reliability of sources and the evidentiary value of claims can be rigorously evaluated.
Foster also tries to trade on topicality in this work focusing heavily on rhetoric from and books on the Trump administration. He of course expresses concerns about the merchants of doubt and their flood the zone strategy, which he calls particularly nihilistic. I think greater emphasis on historical examples of political rhetoric from long settled issues would have been better selections. Even the use of Woodward & Bernstein's Watergate journalism is butting up against the modern era too much. I think a modern era section would be fine in a work like this, but it would need a lot more caveats and deeper discussions about political rhetoric and ideology. Foster's position as authoritative on these issues is unwarranted. This is given away by the fairly narrow range of contemporary and erudite political columnists whose work he selects (mostly a particular iteration of NYT Op-Ed writers like David Brooks and Maureen Dowd).
Despite the many issues with the work (I have failed to catalog all my points of criticism here), I did enjoy some of Foster's passing critical commentary on those loosely group in the New Journalism school: Capote, Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, etc. I think he undersold Wolfe a bit though. Moreover, there are helpful aspects of the work that many readers can benefit from, especially if they are less experienced in reading works of non-fiction.
Foster also tries to trade on topicality in this work focusing heavily on rhetoric from and books on the Trump administration. He of course expresses concerns about the merchants of doubt and their flood the zone strategy, which he calls particularly nihilistic. I think greater emphasis on historical examples of political rhetoric from long settled issues would have been better selections. Even the use of Woodward & Bernstein's Watergate journalism is butting up against the modern era too much. I think a modern era section would be fine in a work like this, but it would need a lot more caveats and deeper discussions about political rhetoric and ideology. Foster's position as authoritative on these issues is unwarranted. This is given away by the fairly narrow range of contemporary and erudite political columnists whose work he selects (mostly a particular iteration of NYT Op-Ed writers like David Brooks and Maureen Dowd).
Despite the many issues with the work (I have failed to catalog all my points of criticism here), I did enjoy some of Foster's passing critical commentary on those loosely group in the New Journalism school: Capote, Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, etc. I think he undersold Wolfe a bit though. Moreover, there are helpful aspects of the work that many readers can benefit from, especially if they are less experienced in reading works of non-fiction.
anniegroover's review against another edition
4.0
I don't know if the title is quite apt, I think it's more "how to read and understand nonfiction well" but that's not as snappy. Nothing too earth-shattering, but entertaining and a good source for some books I haven't read yet.