Rubicon by Tom Holland
Published 2003 · 400 pages · 110,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · History, Journalism & Reportage, Nonfiction
How hard is Rubicon to read?
Rubicon scores 21 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
- Latin terms and Roman political vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 30 out of 100
- Abstraction: 30 out of 100
- Political analysis through vivid narrative.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Rich with detail but driven by story.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Roughly chronological. Clear through-line.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The Rubicon as symbol of no return.
- Ironic distance: 18 out of 100
- Wry awareness of parallels to modern politics.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Caesar crosses. The Republic falls.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- Multiple biographical threads converging.
How Rubicon is regarded
Rubicon 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.