The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith
Published 1776 · 340,178 words · about 26 hours at an average pace · Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics & Society
How hard is The Wealth of Nations to read?
The Wealth of Nations scores 63 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: 45 out of 100
- Eighteenth-century English. Economic concepts now familiar but originally novel.
- Sentence structure: 50 out of 100
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Sustained economic and philosophical argument.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense with economic analysis, historical examples, and policy arguments.
- Narrative indirection: 20 out of 100
- Systematic argument with illustrative examples.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- The invisible hand is a famous metaphor. Otherwise analytical.
- Ironic distance: 15 out of 100
- Smith writes with dry Scottish wit.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Builds to clear economic principles.
- Structural complexity: 40 out of 100
- Five books covering production, capital, policy, and the history of economics.
How The Wealth of Nations is regarded
The Wealth of Nations holds a literary regard score of 80 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.