How long does it take to read The War in the Air?
and particularly how Mr. Bert Smallways fared while it lasted
The War in the Air by H. G. Wells takes about 5 hours 27 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 5 hours 27 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1908. 297 pages, about 81,675 words.
11 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 9 hours 5 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 5 hours 27 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 24 minutes |
The page count is the median across 54 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Following the development of massive airships, naive Londoner Bert Smallways becomes accidentally involved in a German plot to invade America by air and reduce New York to rubble. But although bombers devastate the city, they cannot overwhelm the coutnry, and their attack leads not to victory but to the beginning of a new and horrific age for humanity. And so dawns the era of Total War, in which brutal aerial bombardments reduce the great cultures of the twentieth century to nothing. As civilization collapses around Smallways, now stranded in a ruined America, he clings to only one home - that he might return to London and marry the woman he loves.
Subjects: Fiction, Air warfare, English Science fiction, Science Fiction, Aeronautics, English Adventure stories
