How long does it take to read The Nordic Theory of Everything?
Anu Partanen
The Nordic Theory of Everything by Anu Partanen takes about 8 hours 13 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 8 hours 13 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2016. 448 pages, about 123,200 words.
17 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 13 hours 41 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 13 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 8 minutes |
The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
A Finnish journalist and naturalized American citizen compares and contrasts life in the U.S. with life in the Nordic region to encourage Americans to draw on practices from the Nordic way of life to create a fairer, happier, more secure, and less stressful society. At a 2012 conference on social mobility, where experts discussed whether people worldwide were attaining a better life than their parents', Ed Miliband, the leader of the British Labour Party, made a surprising quip: "If you want the American dream, go to Finland." For decades, the country best known for opportunity had been the United States. No longer, said Miliband. Anu Partanen, however, had recently left Finland and moved to America for the love of her life, a man who would ultimately become her husband. Their relationship flourished, but she found that navigating the basics of everyday life--from health insurance and taxes to education and child care--was much more complicated and stressful than in her homeland. At first she attributed her crippling anxiety to the difficulty of adapting to a freewheeling new culture. But as she got to know Americans better, she discovered that they shared her deep apprehensions. To understand why life in Finland is so drastically different from the way things are in the United States, Partanen began to look closely at both countries. In The Nordic Theory of Everything, Partanen compares living in the United States with life in the Nordic region, focusing on four key relationships--parents and children, men and women, employees and employers, and government and citizens. She debunks criticism that Nordic countries are socialist "nanny states," revealing instead that it is we Americans who are far more enmeshed in unhealthy dependencies than we realize. Step by step, Partanen explains how the Nordic approach allows citizens to enjoy more individual freedom and equality than we do. She wants to open Americans' eyes to how much better things can be--to show her…
Subjects: Social conditions, Civilization, Social policy, Scandinavia, social conditions, United states, social policy
