How long does it take to read The Sword and the Shield?
the Mitrokhin Archive and the secret history of the KGB
The Sword and the Shield by Christopher M. Andrew takes about 12 hours 50 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 12 hours 50 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1999. 700 pages, about 192,500 words.
26 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 21 hours 23 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 12 hours 50 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 8 hours 1 minute |
The page count is the median across 2 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
"The Sword and the Shield gives us by far the most complete picture we have ever had of the KGB and its operations in the United States and Europe. It is based on an unprecedented, top-secret archive described by the FBI as "the most complete and extensive intelligence ever achieved from any source.""--BOOK JACKET. "In 1992 the British Secret Intelligence Service exfiltrated from Russia a defector whose presence in the West has remained secret until the publication of this book. Vasili Mitrokhin worked for almost thirty years in the foreign intelligence archives of the KGB. In 1972 he was made responsible for moving these entire archives, including all the files on the KGB's deep-cover operatives, to new headquarters just outside Moscow. He was congratulated by the head of foreign intelligence, Vladimir Kryuchkov (later the ringleader of the 1991 Moscow coup), for his success in transferring the archives and his "irreproachable service to the state security authorities.""--BOOK JACKET. "Unknown to Kryuchkov, however, Mitrokhin spent over a decade making notes and transcripts of these highly classified files which, at enormous personal risk, he smuggled daily out of the archives and kept beneath his dacha floor. No one who spied for the Soviet Union at any point between the Bolshevik Revolution and the 1980s can now be sure that his or her secrets are safe."--BOOK JACKET. "Christopher Andrew has had exclusive access to both Mitrokhin and his archive, which is now in Britain. Supplementing this treasure trove of KGB secrets with extensive research in other archives, published and unpublished sources, he has written an extraordinary book which forces us to acknowledge that there was indeed an enemy - and that he was very much in our midst."--BOOK JACKET.
Subjects: History, Soviet Union, Intelligence service, Secret service, Foreign relations, Politics and government
