Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis
Published 1964 · 65,000 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · History, Journalism & Reportage, Law, Nonfiction
How hard is Gideon's Trumpet to read?
Gideon's Trumpet scores 19 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: 30 out of 100
- Legal terminology explained for general readers.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 30 out of 100
- Constitutional principles embedded in concrete narrative.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Legal detail balanced with storytelling.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Chronological account of one case from arrest to retrial.
- Symbolic density: 18 out of 100
- Gideon as symbol of the individual against the state.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Measured tone with understated admiration for Gideon's persistence.
- Resolution withholding: 80 out of 100
- The Supreme Court decision provides clear resolution.
- Structural complexity: 20 out of 100
- Linear narrative following one case through the system.
How Gideon's Trumpet is regarded
Gideon's Trumpet holds a literary regard score of 56 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.