Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
Published 2014 · 368 pages · 90,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Law, Memoir & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Politics & Society
How hard is Just Mercy to read?
Just Mercy 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: 28 out of 100
- Legal terms made accessible. Clear prose.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 25 out of 100
- Concrete cases with systemic analysis.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Dense with legal detail and personal narrative.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Chronological case narrative.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- McMillian's case as symbol of systemic injustice.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Earnest, passionate moral witness.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Some cases succeed; the system remains broken.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Interwoven case narratives.
How Just Mercy is regarded
Just Mercy holds a literary regard score of 49 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.