Yoder is the author of the novels Vacancy (2010) and Lions at Lamb House (2007), and the memoir Telling Others What to Think: Recollections of a Pundit (2004). He also wrote nonfiction, including The Historical Present: Uses and Abuses of the Past (1997), Joe Alsop’s Cold War (1995), The Unmaking of a Whig and Other Essays in Self-Definition (1990), and The Night of the Old South Ball (1984).
But he was best known as a journalist for the Washington Star and Washington Post, winning a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1979. Yoder wrote a nationally syndicated column for 15 years (1982 – 1997), and was a media advisor to President Bill Clinton. He taught journalism and American history at the University of North Carolina and Greensboro, and Washington and Lee University.