An essay in Culture indicates the evident decline in longform nonfiction books and causes one to wonder how this digital new media ecosystem is reshaping how we get our news, sources of information, and even how we think. What happens when we as a society stop reading informationally dense material?

It is no secret that reading books is starting to be seen as something of an antiquated pastime. We can read infinitely on our screens (as you’re doing now with this article!), and yet these quick changes in media consumption don’t go without their side effects. Paul Elie writes for Culture,

Last December, The Guardian cited NielsenIQ figures indicating a one-year drop of 8.4 percent in nonfiction book sales (twice that of fiction) and quoted a writer who had “heard publishers have soured on any nonfiction that isn’t ‘Hollywood friendly.’”

These developments suggest a rough future for a certain kind of writing: nonfiction that’s based on reportage more than on personal experience or celebrity — a.k.a. long fact, literary nonfiction, or narrative nonfiction. The form is as essential as it is hard to define. Nonfiction books of this kind are the basis for much of our understanding of the world we live in, and their impact extends far beyond bookstores, book review sections, libraries, and universities. They are a crucial bulwark against the surging public culture of “alternative facts,”outright lies, and the brazen embrace of ignorance.

As Elie notes, certain modes of nonfiction writing, like the celebrity memoir, might be doing all right, but the vital kinds of nonfiction that form the “basis for much of our understanding of the world” are struggling. There are a number of great examples when it comes to significant narrative or literary nonfiction from the recent past. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes won the Pulitzer Prize and tells the story of the physicists who engineered one of history’s greatest (and most terrifying) intellectual feats. Great political books like All the President’s Men, Robert Caro’s monumental book The Power Broker, and Timothy Crouse’s The Boys on the Bus, all take a creative and highly informative approach to remarkable historical events and characters, from real estate moguls to 1960s presidential candidates.

Long Books and the News Cycle

Perhaps it isn’t coincidental that this kind of longform writing is having trouble at the same time that the online news cycle gets ever more ephemeral. Deeply researched books, which also include longform mediums such as novels, can’t satisfy the modern attention span or the appetite for easy solutions. We want the news quick, digestible, and black and white. We have less patience for the complicated, the nuanced, and the ambiguity of narrative nonfiction. And the books don’t even have to be about something so-called “significant” or strictly political. Elie goes on to comment,

I’ve been struck by the pertinence of nonfiction books that don’t deal directly with current affairs. These books develop narratives that at first glance are well outside the news cycle, but as you read them, you find they speak powerfully to the moment precisely because they don’t succumb to the presentism, partisanship, and winners-and-losers schemas too often regarded as inviolable norms of media today.

Elie also notes that these books can serve as a “backdrop” to a lot of the surface-level content we come across online. Going deeper and daring to peek behind the scenes can reform a lot of our understanding of the world we’re living in right now.

To this point, a few months ago I emailed a former professor of mine for his opinion on the Middle East and American foreign policy. I wanted to understand more of the American connections with Iran and Israel in particular just so I could have more informed opinion on the topic. He replied to ask me if I was willing to set aside two years and read dozens of books on the history of the Middle East. I got the message. I wouldn’t become an expert with a handful of op-eds. Understanding the topic would take time and effort.

Ultimately, we need more meticulously researched nonfiction books that take current events and put them into broader contexts. Instilling the value of such books in our education systems will also go a long way. In the end, social media sound bites and podcast banter aren’t enough. We still need to read long books.