The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan
Published 2015 · 1 pages · 180,000 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · History, Nonfiction
How hard is The Silk Roads to read?
The Silk Roads scores 29 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: 38 out of 100
- Central Asian and Middle Eastern names and places unfamiliar to Western readers.
- Sentence structure: 32 out of 100
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- Sweeping historical argument about the flow of civilizations.
- Information density: 60 out of 100
- Dense with unfamiliar names, places, and connections across millennia.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- Broadly chronological with thematic framing. Direct argumentation.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The Silk Roads themselves function as an organizing metaphor. Otherwise analytical.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- Earnest, enthusiastic tone. Frankopan wants to persuade, not ironize.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Builds to a clear thesis about global history.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Chronological chapters from antiquity to the present. Clear organization.
How The Silk Roads is regarded
The Silk Roads holds a literary regard score of 46 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.