How long does it take to read The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made?
Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas
The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made by Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas takes about 15 hours 38 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 15 hours 38 minutes
A long haul
First published 1986. 853 pages, about 234,575 words.
32 days (about 5 weeks) at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 26 hours 4 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 15 hours 38 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 9 hours 46 minutes |
The page count is the median across 14 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
A captivating blend of personal biography and public drama, The Wise Men introduces six close friends who shaped the role their country would play in the dangerous years following World War II. They were the original best and brightest, whose towering intellects, outsize personalities, and dramatic actions would bring order to the postwar chaos and leave a legacy that dominates American policy to this day: Averell Harriman, the freewheeling diplomat and Roosevelt’s special envoy to Churchill and Stalin; Dean Acheson, the secretary of state who was more responsible for the Truman Doctrine than Truman and for the Marshall Plan than General Marshall; George Kennan, self-cast outsider and intellectual darling of the Washington elite; Robert Lovett, assistant secretary of war, undersecretary of state, and secretary of defense throughout the formative years of the Cold War; John McCloy, one of the nation’s most influential private citizens; and Charles Bohlen, adroit diplomat and ambassador to the Soviet Union.
Subjects: Biography, Foreign relations, Statesmen, Relaciones exteriores, International Relations, Diplomatic History
