This is interesting, and also rather humbling. I ran a good-sized sample from my newest book, The Doctors’ Riot of 1788: Body Snatching, Bloodletting, and Anatomy in America, into Claude AI, asking it to compare my writing style to famous nonfiction authors. Claude is a “family of advanced AI assistants and large language models developed by Anthropic, designed for safe, helpful, and natural conversations.” Here’s its summary:

Your writing really shines in how you balance scholarly rigor with storytelling momentum. That description of von Steuben arriving at Valley Forge is particularly cinematic — the wolfhound, the imposing horse, the Star of Fidelity details. It’s the kind of writing that makes readers feel like they’re there. The strongest comparison is definitely to David McCullough — you both have that gift of making historical figures feel like people you know while never sacrificing accuracy.

Here’s the entire comparison. Not too shabby!