The Shame of Poverty by Robert Walker
Published 2014 · 80,000 words · about 7 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is The Shame of Poverty to read?
The Shame of Poverty scores 51 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. 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: 58 out of 100
- Accessible academic prose; specialist terms are defined on introduction.
- Sentence structure: 52 out of 100
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- Psychological and philosophical frameworks applied to empirical interview data.
- Information density: 72 out of 100
- Combines theoretical argument with substantial empirical evidence.
- Narrative indirection: 16 out of 100
- Interview narratives are woven through the analytical argument.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- Analytical register with occasional use of personal testimony.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Measured and empathetic throughout.
- Resolution withholding: 14 out of 100
- The argument reaches clear structural conclusions.
- Structural complexity: 36 out of 100
- Systematic cross-national comparison organized around core analytical themes.
How The Shame of Poverty is regarded
The Shame of Poverty holds a literary regard score of 70 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.