Secrets of the Soil by Peter Tompkins
Published 1989 · 444 pages · 150,000 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Nonfiction, Science & Nature
How many words are on a page? A ReadingRate study
How hard is Secrets of the Soil to read?
Secrets of the Soil scores 42 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: 50 out of 100
- The book moves between soil chemistry (humus, trace elements, cation exchange, nitrogen fixation), anthroposophical terms from Rudolf Steiner's biodynamics, and the invented vocabularies of radionics and paramagnetism. Readers meet unfamiliar technical words on most pages, though the authors write for a lay audience.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Tompkins and Bird write in journalistic prose with long sentences that string together names, dates and claims. Quotations from researchers and farmers break up the exposition; the grammar itself is rarely demanding.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Much of the book reports concrete experiments, farms and crop yields, but it repeatedly leaps to cosmic energies, life forces and planetary healing. Those metaphysical passages sit on top of practical accounts of composting and rock dust.
- Information density: 62 out of 100
- Each chapter profiles a new researcher or method, from Steiner's biodynamic preparations and Julius Hensel's rock dust to Philip Callahan's work on insects and paramagnetism and John Hamaker's remineralisation thesis. The volume of names, figures and claims is high, and the chapters stand largely alone.
- Argumentative complexity: 35 out of 100
- The book builds a cumulative case that chemical fertilisers and pesticides have depleted soil, food and health, and that neglected alternatives can restore them. The case is assembled from testimonials and experiments presented largely uncritically, with no counter-evidence for the reader to weigh.
- Prerequisite knowledge: 30 out of 100
- Some familiarity with basic chemistry, farming and the organic movement helps, as does awareness of the authors' earlier The Secret Life of Plants. The book explains its sources as it goes.
- Terminological opacity: 45 out of 100
- Readers must handle both genuine agronomy (NPK fertilisers, humus, microorganisms) and fringe terminology (radionic instruments, biodynamic preparations numbered 500 to 508, paramagnetism), often without clear signals about which is established science.
- Rhetorical indirection: 25 out of 100
- The authors advocate openly and enthusiastically for the methods they describe. The difficulty lies in separating their reporting of claims from endorsement, which the prose seldom distinguishes.
- Systemic scope: 55 out of 100
- The book ranges across agronomy, chemistry, physics, geology and climate, anthroposophy, nutrition and agricultural economics. Few popular books on farming range so far, though the synthesis is loose.
How Secrets of the Soil is regarded
Secrets of the Soil holds a literary regard score of 31 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.