How long does it take to read Basin and Range?
Basin and Range by John McPhee takes about 3 hours 57 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 3 hours 57 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1980. 215 pages, about 59,125 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 34 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 3 hours 57 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 28 minutes |
The page count is the median across 10 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
From the blog View From The Blue House - "John McPhee is considered one of the pioneers of creative nonfiction. In 1978 he started a set of journeys across America with geologists that turned into a series of five books published over twenty years. Basin and Range is the first book in the series and mostly concerns the geological landscape from eastern Utah to eastern California. Rather than produce a straight science narrative about the geology of the region, or a conventional history of the science of geology, McPhee instead travels with geologists to explore and write about the landscape. The result is a rather eclectic set of stories and observations about the science of geology, the rocks visible in the landscape and hidden underground, the nature of time and the history of the geologic time scale, the unfolding of the theory of plate tectonics, and the work of geologists. In this sense, it seeks to create a discussion of geology that might appeal to the non-geologist and geologist alike; to create a kind of geo-prose that ruminates on the long history of the development of the Earth’s surface. "
Subjects: Geology, Description and travel, Geology - The West, Geology - North America - West
