What Is History? by E.H. Carr
Published 1961 · 68,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is What Is History? to read?
What Is History? scores 46 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: 55 out of 100
- Academic but accessible vocabulary aimed at a general university audience.
- Sentence structure: 52 out of 100
- Abstraction: 72 out of 100
- Philosophical claims about historical knowledge require sustained attention.
- Information density: 74 out of 100
- Lectures pack substantial argument into short chapters with no padding.
- Narrative indirection: 14 out of 100
- Carr argues his positions directly and polemically.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- Analytical prose with minimal figurative elaboration.
- Ironic distance: 18 out of 100
- Dry wit deployed against empiricist naivety and moralist historians.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Carr arrives at clear, if controversial, positions on every major question.
- Structural complexity: 32 out of 100
- Six lectures with cumulative argument and clear sequential organization.
How What Is History? is regarded
What Is History? holds a literary regard score of 87 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.