How long does it take to read Empire of Illusion?
The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle
Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges takes about 4 hours 24 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 24 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2009. 240 pages, about 66,000 words.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 7 hours 20 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 24 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 45 minutes |
The page count is the median across 8 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion. Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this "other society," serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title
Subjects: Popular culture, Mass media, Multi-Cultural, Nonfiction, Massenkultur, Kulturkritik
