To Hell and Back
Published 2002 · 274 pages · 75,350 words · about 3 hours at an average pace · Memoir & Autobiography, War Fiction, History
How hard is To Hell and Back to read?
To Hell and Back scores 19 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: 28 out of 100
- A mass-market war memoir reissued as a paperback for general readers points to plain, direct vocabulary. Military terms appear but nothing approaches the density of Gravity's Rainbow; it sits near the clarity of The Diary of a Young Girl, with a bit more technical language.
- Sentence structure: 30 out of 100
- A memoir of this length and readership suggests straightforward declarative prose in the vein of 1984. Sentences are likely short to medium with little nesting.
- Abstraction: 28 out of 100
- War memoirs rest on concrete events, combat and places. It sits near the concrete end of Atomic Habits, with little philosophical argument.
- Information density: 32 out of 100
- At about 75,000 words and 274 pages, the book is a manageable read. It carries military detail but moves at a comfortable pace like Beach Read.
How To Hell and Back is regarded
To Hell and Back holds a literary regard score of 43 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.