How long does it take to read A Little History of the World?
A Little History of the World by E. H. Gombrich takes about 5 hours 12 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 12 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2005. 284 pages, about 78,100 words. Written for children.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 41 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 12 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 15 minutes |
The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited by a publishing acquaintance to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser was published in Vienna to immediate success, and is now available in seventeen languages across the world. Toward the end of his long life, Gombrich embarked upon a revision and, at last, an English translation. A Little History of the World presents his lively and involving history to English-language readers for the first time. Superbly designed and freshly illustrated, this is a book to be savored and collected. In forty concise chapters, Gombrich tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. In between emerges a colorful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science. This is a text dominated not by dates and facts, but by the sweep of mankind’s experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity’s achievements and an acute witness to its frailties. The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history.
Subjects: World history, Histoire universelle, Ouvrages pour la jeunesse, Memorial bookplates, Whitman College
