Main currents in American thought vs Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
14,958words between them — 1h 00m of it
Main currents in American thought is longer — 540,577 words against 525,619 for Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete, a difference of 14,958 words or about 1h 00m of extra reading. Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete is the harder read, at grade 18.5 against 12.4.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Main currents in American thought | Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Parrington, Vernon Louis | Montaigne, Michel de |
| Words | 540,577 | 525,619 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 36h 02m | 35h 02m |
| Unique words | 27,385 | 25,883 |
| Sentences | 23,526 | 11,932 |
| Average sentence length | 23 words | 44.1 words |
| Reading grade | 12.4 | 18.5 |
| Reading ease | 47 | 40.7 |
| Long words | 16.6% | 10.3% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |540,577 − 525,619| = 14,958 words 14,958 ÷ 250 wpm = 1h 00m of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Main currents in American thought or Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete?
Main currents in American thought is longer — 540,577 words against 525,619 for Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete, a difference of 14,958 words or about 1h 00m of extra reading. Essays of Michel de Montaigne — Complete is the harder read, at grade 18.5 against 12.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 78025 and no. 3600 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.
