The Essential Darwin: On the Origins of Species/The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin
Published 2006 · 44,550 words · about 3 hours at an average pace
How hard is The Essential Darwin: On the Origins of Species/The Descent of Man to read?
The Essential Darwin: On the Origins of Species/The Descent of Man scores 60 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 68 out of 100
- Victorian natural-history vocabulary, much of it technical.
- Sentence structure: 76 out of 100
- Long periodic sentences with heavy subordination.
- Abstraction: 65 out of 100
- Concrete evidence marshalled toward one abstract mechanism.
- Information density: 78 out of 100
- A selection, so slightly less relentless than the full Origin, but still dense.
How The Essential Darwin: On the Origins of Species/The Descent of Man is regarded
The Essential Darwin: On the Origins of Species/The Descent of Man holds a literary regard score of 96 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.