How long does it take to read The Great Bridge?
The Great Bridge by David McCullough takes about 11 hours 24 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 11 hours 24 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1972. 622 pages, about 171,050 words.
23 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 19 hours |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 11 hours 24 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 7 hours 8 minutes |
The page count is the median across 18 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Built to join the rapidly expanding cities of New York and Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Bridge was thought by many at the start to be an impossibility destined to fail if not from insurmountable technical problems then from political corruption. (It was the heyday of Boss Tweed in New York.) But the Brooklyn Bridge was at once the greatest engineering triumph of the age, a surpassing work of art, a proud American icon, and a story like no other in our history. Courage, chicanery, unprecedented ingenuity and plain blundering, heroes, rascals, all the best and worst in human nature played a part. At the center of the drama were the stricken chief engineer, Washington Roebling and his remarkable wife, Emily Warren Roebling, neither of whom ever gave up in the face of one heartbreaking setback after another. The Great Bridge is a sweeping narrative of a stupendous American achievement that rose up out of its era like a cathedral, a symbol of affirmation then and still in our time.
Subjects: Bridges, Brooklyn Bridge (New York, N.Y.), History
