Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower
Published 1999 · 1 pages · 208,461 words · about 11 hours at an average pace · History, Nonfiction
How hard is Embracing Defeat to read?
Embracing Defeat scores 30 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: 35 out of 100
- Japanese terms and historical vocabulary. Well-glossed.
- Sentence structure: 35 out of 100
- Abstraction: 38 out of 100
- Cultural analysis grounded in specific detail.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Extremely rich with primary-source detail.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Thematic chapters rather than strict chronology.
- Symbolic density: 18 out of 100
- The emperor's voice as symbol of surrender and change.
- Ironic distance: 18 out of 100
- American idealism meeting Japanese reality.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- The transformation is shown as ambiguous and ongoing.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Six thematic parts covering multiple dimensions of occupation.
How Embracing Defeat is regarded
Embracing Defeat holds a literary regard score of 80 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.