Race, Language, and Culture by Franz Boas

Published 1940 · 177,925 words · about 12 hours at an average pace

How hard is Race, Language, and Culture to read?

Race, Language, and Culture scores 62 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. 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: 68 out of 100
Technical anthropological and linguistic vocabulary throughout.
Sentence structure: 72 out of 100
Dense academic German-inflected English with long qualified clauses.
Abstraction: 72 out of 100
Sustained conceptual argument about culture, race and language.
Information density: 78 out of 100
A collection of research papers, so the information rate is high.

How Race, Language, and Culture is regarded

Race, Language, and Culture holds a literary regard score of 75 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.

About the author

Franz Boas