How long does it take to read Good Ancestor?
Roman Krznaric, Efrén del Valle Peñamil
Good Ancestor by Roman Krznaric, Efrén del Valle Peñamil takes about 5 hours 33 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 33 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2020. 303 pages, about 83,325 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 16 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 33 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 28 minutes |
The page count is the median across 13 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
'This is the book our children's children will thank us for reading' – The Edge, U2 How can we be good ancestors? From the first seeds sown thousands of years ago, to the construction of the cities we still inhabit, to the scientific discoveries that have ensured our survival, we are the inheritors of countless gifts from the past. Today, in an age driven by the tyranny of the now, with 24/7 news, the latest tweet, and the buy-now button commanding our attention, we rarely stop to consider how our actions will affect future generations. With such frenetic short-termism at the root of contemporary crises, the call for long-term thinking grows every day – but what is it, has it ever worked, and can we even do it? In The Good Ancestor, leading public philosopher Roman Krznaric argues that there is still hope. From the pyramids to the NHS, humankind has always had the innate ability to plan for posterity and take action that will resonate for decades, centuries, even millennia to come. If we want to become good ancestors, now is the time to recover and enrich this imaginative skill. The Good Ancestor reveals six profound ways in which we can all learn to think long-term, exploring how we can reawaken oft-neglected but uniquely human talents like ‘cathedral thinking’ that expand our time horizons and sharpen our foresight. Drawing on radical solutions from around the world, Krznaric celebrates the innovators who are reinventing democracy, culture and economics so that we all have the chance to become good ancestors and create a better tomorrow.
Subjects: Social history, Psychology, Economic history, Long Now Manual for Civilization
