When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein
Published 2000 · 288 pages · 90,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Business & Self-Help, History, Nonfiction
How hard is When Genius Failed to read?
When Genius Failed scores 27 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: 35 out of 100
- Financial derivatives terminology. Requires some market literacy.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Abstraction: 35 out of 100
- Financial models and leverage explained for lay readers.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Dense with financial detail and market mechanics.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Chronological rise-and-fall structure.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- LTCM as symbol of intellectual hubris.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- Nobel laureates destroyed by the markets they modeled.
- Resolution withholding: 80 out of 100
- The collapse is the climax. The bailout is the resolution.
- Structural complexity: 22 out of 100
- Three parts: rise, crisis, aftermath.
How When Genius Failed is regarded
When Genius Failed holds a literary regard score of 45 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.