Main currents in American thought vs Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
51,270words between them — 3h 25m of it
Main currents in American thought is longer — 540,577 words against 489,307 for Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete, a difference of 51,270 words or about 3h 25m of extra reading. Main currents in American thought is the harder read, at grade 12.4 against 11.4.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Main currents in American thought | Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Parrington, Vernon Louis | Bourrienne, Louis Antoine Fauvelet de |
| Words | 540,577 | 489,307 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 36h 02m | 32h 37m |
| Unique words | 27,385 | 19,464 |
| Sentences | 23,526 | 20,726 |
| Average sentence length | 23 words | 23.6 words |
| Reading grade | 12.4 | 11.4 |
| Reading ease | 47 | 55.6 |
| Long words | 16.6% | 13.3% |
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 − 489,307| = 51,270 words 51,270 ÷ 250 wpm = 3h 25m of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Main currents in American thought or Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete?
Main currents in American thought is longer — 540,577 words against 489,307 for Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte — Complete, a difference of 51,270 words or about 3h 25m of extra reading. Main currents in American thought is the harder read, at grade 12.4 against 11.4.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 78025 and no. 3567 — 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.
