Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling by Jason De León
Published 2024 · 110,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Politics & Society, Journalism & Reportage, Nonfiction
How hard is Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling to read?
Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling scores 35 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
- A trade-published ethnography by an academic aimed at general readers, so the prose is likely clear with some anthropological terms. It sits closer to accessible contemporary nonfiction than to dense scholarly writing, though less simple than Atomic Habits.
- Sentence structure: 38 out of 100
- Reviewers describe a humane, readable voice, which points to ordinary narrative-reportage sentences rather than theory-laden constructions. Expect measured, direct syntax.
- Abstraction: 40 out of 100
- The book rests on seven years of fieldwork with coyotes, so ideas are tied to people and concrete situations. Some analytic framing of smuggling as an economy and survival system adds abstraction, placing it near Atomic Habits.
- Information density: 52 out of 100
- A roughly 400-page study of a whole industry carries a lot of ethnographic detail about routes, roles and relationships. It is information-rich but written for a general audience, a little above Atomic Habits.
How Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling is regarded
Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling holds a literary regard score of 55 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.