Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Published 2016 · 120,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Journalism & Reportage, Nonfiction, Politics & Society
How hard is Evicted to read?
Evicted scores 22 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
- Clear, accessible prose. Sociological concepts explained through stories.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 30 out of 100
- Concrete ethnography. Systemic analysis emerges from individual stories.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Dense with personal narrative, statistical data, and policy analysis.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Multiple interwoven narratives. Direct, immersive reporting.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- Milwaukee stands in for urban America. Otherwise literal ethnography.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Empathetic, committed tone. Desmond cares deeply about his subjects.
- Resolution withholding: 20 out of 100
- Most of the families' stories don't resolve happily. The systemic problem persists.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- Eight interleaved narratives with analytical chapters.
How Evicted is regarded
Evicted holds a literary regard score of 54 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.