And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts

Published 2000 · 173,250 words · about 12 hours at an average pace

How hard is And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic to read?

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic scores 50 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. 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: 50 out of 100
Medical and political vocabulary, glossed.
Sentence structure: 50 out of 100
Short newspaper sentences.
Abstraction: 48 out of 100
Concrete reporting with a strong causal argument.
Information density: 72 out of 100
Hundreds of named people across a decade — the density is in the cast.

How And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic is regarded

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic holds a literary regard score of 70 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.

About the author

Randy Shilts