The Run of His Life by Jeffrey Toobin

Published 1996 · 110,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Journalism & Reportage, Law, Mystery & Crime, Nonfiction

How hard is The Run of His Life to read?

The Run of His Life 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: 25 out of 100
Legal terms in accessible context. Very readable.
Sentence structure: 25 out of 100
Abstraction: 25 out of 100
Concrete courtroom drama with social analysis.
Information density: 45 out of 100
Dense with legal detail, character portraits, and cultural context.
Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
Chronological account of the case.
Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
The trial as mirror of American racial divisions.
Ironic distance: 18 out of 100
The absurdity of the spectacle treated with sharp observation.
Resolution withholding: 80 out of 100
The verdict is known. Toobin focuses on how it happened.
Structural complexity: 20 out of 100
Chronological narrative with thematic analysis.

How The Run of His Life is regarded

The Run of His Life holds a literary regard score of 44 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

Jeffrey Toobin