How long does it take to read A Short History of Progress?
A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright takes about 3 hours 52 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 52 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2004. 211 pages, about 58,025 words.
8 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 27 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 52 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 25 minutes |
The page count is the median across 3 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Palaeolithic hunters who learnt how to kill two mammoths instead of one had made progress. Those who learnt how to kill 200 by driving a whole herd over a cliff had made too much. Many of the great ruins that grace the deserts and jungles of the earth are monuments to progress traps, the headstones of civilisations which fell victim to their own success. The twentieth-century´s runaway growth has placed a murderous burden on the planet. A Short History of Progress argues that this modern predicament is as old as civilisation. Only by understanding the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated since the Stone Age can we recognise the inherent dangers, and, with luck, and wisdom, shape its outcome.
Subjects: History, Progress, Civilization, Environmental degradation, Nonfiction, Science
