How long does it take to read Small Is Beautiful?
A Study of Economics As If People Mattered
Small Is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher takes about 5 hours 19 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 19 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1905. 290 pages, about 79,750 words.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 8 hours 52 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 19 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 19 minutes |
The page count is the median across 50 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
E. F. Schumacher, a German-born British economist, gathers essays that question the assumption that bigger economies and technologies are better. Drawing on an idea from his teacher Leopold Kohr, he favours modest, fitting technologies and smaller political units. He argues that modern industrial economies cannot last, because they burn through fuels that cannot be replaced as though these were ordinary income, and because nature can absorb only so much pollution. His alternative is a philosophy of enough, shaped by village economies, that respects human needs and limits. The essays also cover education, land, nuclear power, developing countries, and large organizations.
This summary was written by AI and checked by a second AI model. How these are chosen.
Subjects: Economics, Economic policy, Economic development, Microeconomics, Aesthetics, Appropriate technology
