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His inspirations include poets like Emily Dickinson and writers like John McPhee and George Orwell. When he gets stuck, he frequently goes back to writing with a pen and paper. And he will often open to a random page of “Moby Dick” and read for a while, “Just to feel sort of free enough to write again.”

As for finding his subjects, Kidder said it’s not easy, but that he tries to find a person who is doing “something interesting, or who interests me.” It’s not ideas he finds compelling, but people.

Above all, he told his audience last month, “the cardinal rule for nonfiction writers is to make what you have … believable to your readers.”

You have to find a way to credibly tell your readers, said Kidder: “I know this sounds too good to be true, but it happened.”