Thick: And Other Essays
Published 2019 · 248 pages · 68,200 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism, Politics & Society, Nonfiction
How hard is Thick: And Other Essays to read?
Thick: And Other Essays scores 40 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: 45 out of 100
- Cottom mixes sociological terms like credentialism with conversational slang and pop-culture references. The prose stays accessible, closer to Atomic Habits in clarity but with more academic vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 40 out of 100
- Sentences are mostly direct and punchy, with occasional longer analytic constructions. Much more readable than academic sociology.
- Abstraction: 50 out of 100
- Arguments about capital, race and markets are anchored in concrete episodes like hospital visits and jobs. That grounding makes the theory tangible.
- Information density: 52 out of 100
- Essays pack statistics, theory and anecdote into short spans, so each page carries several ideas. Denser than Atomic Habits but easier than a monograph.
How Thick: And Other Essays is regarded
Thick: And Other Essays holds a literary regard score of 57 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.