Flash Boys by Michael Lewis
Published 2014 · 80,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Business & Self-Help, Journalism & Reportage, Media & Technology, Nonfiction
How hard is Flash Boys to read?
Flash Boys scores 20 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: 32 out of 100
- Financial and technical terminology. Market microstructure.
- Sentence structure: 25 out of 100
- Abstraction: 30 out of 100
- Complex financial technology made concrete.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Dense with technical and financial detail.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Linear investigation with a clear protagonist.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- The speed bump as symbol of fairness.
- Ironic distance: 18 out of 100
- The absurdity of microsecond advantages worth billions.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- IEX launches but the battle continues.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Chronological investigation with technical explanations.
How Flash Boys is regarded
Flash Boys holds a literary regard score of 43 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.