Under the Red Dragon vs The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
784words between them — 3 min of it
Under the Red Dragon is longer — 151,277 words against 150,493 for The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life, a difference of 784 words or about 3 min of extra reading. Under the Red Dragon is the harder read, at grade 15.5 against 8.6.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| Under the Red Dragon | The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Grant, James | Stevens, Frank Everett |
| Words | 151,277 | 150,493 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 10h 05m | 10h 02m |
| Unique words | 14,816 | 10,472 |
| Sentences | 4,070 | 8,762 |
| Average sentence length | 37.2 words | 17.2 words |
| Reading grade | 15.5 | 8.6 |
| Reading ease | 50.2 | 64.1 |
| Long words | 9.3% | 11.4% |
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 = |151,277 − 150,493| = 784 words 784 ÷ 250 wpm = 3 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, Under the Red Dragon or The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life?
Under the Red Dragon is longer — 151,277 words against 150,493 for The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life, a difference of 784 words or about 3 min of extra reading. Under the Red Dragon is the harder read, at grade 15.5 against 8.6.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 53874 and no. 49402 — 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.
