Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation by Margaret Mead
Published 2001 · 75,844 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Nonfiction, Psychology, Politics & Society
How hard is Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation to read?
Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation scores 37 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: 42 out of 100
- Mead writes in plain 1920s social-science English, with Samoan terms like matai, taupo, aumaga and moetotolo glossed on first use. The register is clearer than Moby-Dick but denser than Beach Read.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Sentences run long and stack clauses in lists of customs, yet they stay orderly and declarative. The prose is closer to The Great Gatsby in clarity than to Anna Karenina in nesting.
- Abstraction: 45 out of 100
- Most pages describe concrete things: fishing, weaving, dances, named girls. The argument about culture versus biology stays in view, as in Atomic Habits' use of examples for concepts, but with more theory.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Kinship rules, titles, taboos and dozens of named girls arrive in quick succession. Chapters such as IV and VI pack a whole social system into a few pages.
How Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation is regarded
Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation holds a literary regard score of 79 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.
Where the story of Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation takes place
- American Samoa, 1925-1926 (1925 to 1926), the main setting