How long does it take to read Enlightenment Now?
the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress
Steven Pinker, Pablo Hermida Lazcano
Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker, Pablo Hermida Lazcano takes about 10 hours 34 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 10 hours 34 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2018. 576 pages, about 158,400 words.
22 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 17 hours 36 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 10 hours 34 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 6 hours 36 minutes |
The page count is the median across 12 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data. In seventy-five graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature -- tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking -- which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. Pinker makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Subjects: Progress, Modern Civilization, Humanism, Social change, Quality of life, Rationalism
