The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Published 2015 · 650 pages · 90,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Biography, History, Nonfiction, Science & Nature
How hard is The Wright Brothers to read?
The Wright Brothers scores 16 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: 25 out of 100
- Aviation and engineering terms. Accessible general audience.
- Sentence structure: 25 out of 100
- Abstraction: 20 out of 100
- Concrete narrative biography.
- Information density: 42 out of 100
- Well-paced. Rich detail without overwhelming.
- Narrative indirection: 80 out of 100
- Chronological. Direct, classic storytelling.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- Flight as metaphor for human aspiration.
- Ironic distance: 80 out of 100
- Warm, admiring tone. Straightforward.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- The first flight is the dramatic climax.
- Structural complexity: 18 out of 100
- Clean chronological structure.
How The Wright Brothers is regarded
The Wright Brothers holds a literary regard score of 47 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.