On a Move: Philadelphia's Notorious Bombing and a Native Son's Lifelong Battle for Justice by Mike Africa Jr

How hard is On a Move: Philadelphia's Notorious Bombing and a Native Son's Lifelong Battle for Justice to read?

On a Move: Philadelphia's Notorious Bombing and a Native Son's Lifelong Battle for Justice scores 24 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

A trade memoir co-written with D. Watkins, it most likely uses plain, direct contemporary prose. Its subject matter of legal cases, policing and activism calls for little specialized vocabulary, closer to the clear register of Atomic Habits than to literary fiction.

Sentence structure: 28 out of 100

A 304-page mainstream memoir from Mariner, with a narrative voice built on personal recollection and a Library Journal verdict of well written. Sentences should run direct and conversational.

Abstraction: 32 out of 100

The book is anchored in concrete events: the 1985 bombing, a birth in a prison cell, a 40-year imprisonment of the author's parents. Its political ideas arrive through lived experience rather than theory.

Information density: 40 out of 100

It combines a personal memoir with a history of MOVE, the 1978 conviction and the 1985 bombing. At 304 pages it carries a moderate load of names, dates and events, without dense technical apparatus.

How On a Move: Philadelphia's Notorious Bombing and a Native Son's Lifelong Battle for Justice is regarded

On a Move: Philadelphia's Notorious Bombing and a Native Son's Lifelong Battle for Justice holds a literary regard score of 23 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.

About the author

Mike Africa Jr