How long does it take to read The Thirty Years War?
Europe's tragedy
The Thirty Years War by Peter H. Wilson takes about 18 hours 46 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 18 hours 46 minutes
A long haul
First published 2009. 1,024 pages, about 281,600 words.
38 days (about 6 weeks) at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 31 hours 17 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 18 hours 46 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 11 hours 44 minutes |
The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
The horrific series of conflicts known as the Thirty Years War (1618-48) tore the heart out of Europe, killing perhaps a quarter of all Germans and laying waste to whole areas of Central Europe to such a degree that many towns and regions never recovered. All the major European powers apart from Russia were heavily involved and, while each country started out with rational war aims, the fighting rapidly spiralled out of control, with great battles giving way to marauding bands of starving soldiers spreading plague and murder. The war was both a religious and a political one and it was this tangle of motives that made it impossible to stop. Whether motivated by idealism or cynicism, everyone drawn into the conflict was destroyed by it. At its end a recognizably modern Europe had been created but at a terrible price.Peter Wilson's book is a major work, the first new history of the war in a generation, and a fascinating, brilliantly written attempt to explain a compelling series of events. Wilson's great strength is in allowing the reader to understand the tragedy of mixed motives that allowed rulers to gamble their countries' future with such horrifying results. The principal actors in the drama (Wallenstein, Ferdinand II, Gustavus Adolphus, Richelieu) are all here, but so is the experience of the ordinary soldiers and civilians, desperately trying to stay alive under impossible circumstances.The extraordinary narrative of the war haunted Europe's leaders into the twentieth century (comparisons with 1939–45 were entirely appropriate) and modern Europe cannot be understood without reference to this dreadful conflict.
Subjects: Military History, History, Nonfiction, Europe, history, military, Dertigjarige oorlog, Heilige Roomse rijk der Duitse Natie
