Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher
Published 1973 · 75,000 words · about 5 hours at an average pace · Nature & Environment, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics & Society
How hard is Small Is Beautiful to read?
Small Is Beautiful scores 28 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: 30 out of 100
- Economic and philosophical terms, but written for a general audience.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 38 out of 100
- Philosophical principles applied to concrete economic and technological questions.
- Information density: 45 out of 100
- Dense with argument but written in an engaging, essay-like style.
- Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
- Direct, thesis-driven essays.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- Smallness as philosophical and economic ideal. Scale as organizing concept.
- Ironic distance: 100 out of 100
- Earnest, passionate tone. Schumacher is a true believer.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Schumacher offers clear prescriptions: smaller scale, intermediate technology, Buddhist economics.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Four parts collecting related essays. Modular and accessible.
How Small Is Beautiful is regarded
Small Is Beautiful holds a literary regard score of 53 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.