How long does it take to read The Man Who Couldn't Stop?
David Adam
The Man Who Couldn't Stop by David Adam takes about 5 hours 56 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 56 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2015. 324 pages, about 89,100 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 54 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 56 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 43 minutes |
The page count is the median across 4 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
An intimate look at the power of intrusive thoughts, how our brains can turn against us, and living with obsessive compulsive disorder Have you ever had a strange urge to jump from a tall building or steer your car into oncoming traffic? You are not alone. In this captivating fusion of science, history, and personal memoir, David Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind, and how they drive millions of us toward obsession and compulsion. Adam, an editor at Nature and an accomplished science writer, has suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder for twenty years, and The Man Who Couldn’t Stop is his unflinchingly honest attempt to understand the condition and his experiences. What might lead an Ethiopian schoolgirl to eat a wall of her house, piece by piece, or a pair of brothers to die beneath an avalanche of household junk that they had compulsively hoarded? At what point does a harmless idea, a snowflake in a clear summer sky, become a blinding blizzard of unwanted thoughts? Drawing on the latest research on the brain, as well as historical accounts of patients and their treatments, this is a book that will challenge the way you think about what is normal and what is mental illness. Told with fierce clarity, humor, and urgent lyricism, this extraordinary book is both the haunting story of a personal nightmare and a fascinating doorway into the darkest corners of our minds.
Subjects: Obsessive-compulsive disorder, Anecdotes, Great britain, biography, Personal memoirs, Psychology
