How long does it take to read American Scripture?
Pauline Maier
American Scripture by Pauline Maier takes about 5 hours 41 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 41 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1997. 310 pages, about 85,250 words.
12 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 9 hours 28 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 41 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 33 minutes |
The page count is the median across 4 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Pauline Maier shows us the Declaration as both the defining statement of our national identity and the moral standard by which we live as a nation. It is truly "American Scripture," and Maier tells us how it came to be - from the Declaration's birth in the hard and tortuous struggle by which Americans arrived at Independence to the ways in which, in the nineteenth century, the document itself became sanctified. Maier describes the transformation of the Second Continental Congress into a national government, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, and with more authority than the colonists would ever have conceded to the British Parliament; the great difficulty in making the decision for Independence; the influence of Paine's Common Sense, which shifted the terms of debate; and the political maneuvers that allowed Congress to make the momentous decision.
Subjects: Politics and government, United States, United states.
