How long does it take to read Lawrence in Arabia?
Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson takes about 10 hours 35 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 10 hours 35 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2013. 577 pages, about 158,675 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 38 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 10 hours 35 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 6 hours 37 minutes |
The page count is the median across 4 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
This book is a thrilling and revelatory narrative of one of the most epic and consequential episodes in twentieth-century history -- the Arab Revolt and the secret "great game" to control the Middle East. The Arab Revolt against the Turks in World War I was, in the words of T.E. Lawrence, "a sideshow of a sideshow." Amidst the slaughter in European trenches, the Western combatants paid scant attention to the Middle Eastern theater. As a result, the conflict was shaped to a remarkable degree by a small handful of adventurers and low-level officers far removed from the corridors of power. Curt Prüfer was an effete academic attached to the German embassy in Cairo, whose clandestine role was to foment Islamic jihad against British rule. Aaron Aaronsohn was a renowned agronomist and committed Zionist who gained the trust of the Ottoman governor of Syria. William Yale was a fallen scion of the American aristocracy, who traveled the Ottoman Empire on behalf of Standard Oil, dissembling to the Turks in order to gain valuable oil concessions. At the center of it all was Lawrence. In early 1914 he was an archaeologist excavating ruins in the sands of Syria; by 1917 he was the most romantic figure of World War I, battling both the enemy and his own government to bring about the vision he had for the Arab people. The intertwined paths of these four men -- the schemes they put in place, the battles they fought, the betrayals they endured and committed -- mirror the grandeur, intrigue, and tragedy of the war in the desert. Prüfer became Germany's great spymaster in the Middle East. Aaronsohn constructed an elaborate Jewish spy ring in Palestine, only to have the anti-Semitic and bureaucratically inept British first ignore and then misuse his organization, at tragic personal cost. Yale would become the only American intelligence agent in the entire Middle East -- while still secretly on the payroll of Standard Oil. And the enigmatic Lawrence rode into legend at the head of an…
Subjects: Weltkrieg, Great Britain. Army, Campaigns, Great Britain, Arabieren, Military campaigns
