The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow
Published 2008 · 324 pages · 70,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Nonfiction, Psychology, Science & Nature
How hard is The Drunkard's Walk to read?
The Drunkard's Walk scores 17 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. 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: 28 out of 100
- Mathematical terms explained accessibly.
- Sentence structure: 25 out of 100
- Abstraction: 32 out of 100
- Statistical concepts grounded in stories.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Good balance of narrative and explanation.
- Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
- Direct, chronological with topical chapters.
- Symbolic density: 100 out of 100
- The drunkard's walk as central metaphor.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- Amused at human self-deception.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- Each chapter delivers clear conclusions.
- Structural complexity: 18 out of 100
- Ten sequential chapters.
How The Drunkard's Walk is regarded
The Drunkard's Walk holds a literary regard score of 39 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.