The Anabasis of Alexander vs Desperate Remedies
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
1,533words between them — 6 min of it
The Anabasis of Alexander is longer — 141,961 words against 140,428 for Desperate Remedies, a difference of 1,533 words or about 6 min of extra reading. Desperate Remedies is the harder read, at grade 8.9 against 8.5.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Anabasis of Alexander | Desperate Remedies | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Arrian | Hardy, Thomas |
| Words | 141,961 | 140,428 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 9h 28m | 9h 22m |
| Unique words | 9,890 | 11,745 |
| Sentences | 8,526 | 6,873 |
| Average sentence length | 16.7 words | 20.4 words |
| Reading grade | 8.5 | 8.9 |
| Reading ease | 63.6 | 67.8 |
| Long words | 12% | 9.1% |
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 = |141,961 − 140,428| = 1,533 words 1,533 ÷ 250 wpm = 6 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Anabasis of Alexander or Desperate Remedies?
The Anabasis of Alexander is longer — 141,961 words against 140,428 for Desperate Remedies, a difference of 1,533 words or about 6 min of extra reading. Desperate Remedies is the harder read, at grade 8.9 against 8.5.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 46976 and no. 3044 — 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.
