How long does it take to read The Longest Winter?
The Longest Winter by Alex Kershaw takes about 6 hours 45 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 45 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2004. 368 pages, about 101,200 words.
14 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 11 hours 15 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 45 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 4 hours 13 minutes |
The page count is the median across 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Overview: "It was a cold December morning in 1944, deep in the Ardennes forest of Belgium. Eighteen men of a small intelligence platoon commanded by twenty-year-old lieutenant Lyle Bouck were huddled in their foxholes, desperately trying to keep warm. Suddenly the early morning silence was broken by the roar of a huge artillery bombardment. Hitler had launched his bold and risky offensive against the Allies - his "last gamble" - and the American platoon was facing the main thrust of the entire German assault." "Vastly outnumbered, the platoon repulsed three German assaults in a fierce day-long battle to defend a strategically vital hill. Only when Bouck's men had run out of ammunition did they surrender." "But their long winter was just beginning." As POWs, Bouck's platoon experienced an ordeal far worse than combat - surviving in captivity with trigger-happy German guards, Allied bombing raids, and a starvation diet. While hundreds of other captured Americans in German POW camps were either killed or died of disease, the men of Bouck's platoon miraculously survived - all of them - and returned home after the war. More than thirty years later, when President Carter recognized the unit's "extraordinary heroism" and the U.S. Army approved combat medals for all eighteen men, they became America's most decorated platoon of World War II.
Subjects: Prisoners and prisons, Prisoners and prisons, German, German Prisoners and prisons, United States, History, Regimental histories
