Propaganda by Edward Bernays
Published 1928 · 30,000 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · Media & Technology, Nonfiction, Politics & Society, Psychology
How hard is Propaganda to read?
Propaganda scores 39 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. 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
- Early 20th-century register. Some dated terms.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 35 out of 100
- Theory of propaganda illustrated with examples.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Compact and argument-driven.
- Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
- Direct argumentative structure.
- Symbolic density: 100 out of 100
- Analytical and prescriptive.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Unsettlingly earnest about manipulation.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- Clear thesis stated and defended.
- Structural complexity: 15 out of 100
- Short, topical chapters.
How Propaganda is regarded
Propaganda holds a literary regard score of 55 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.