How long does it take to read The World Until Yesterday?
Jared Diamond, Efrén del Valle Peñamil
The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond, Efrén del Valle Peñamil takes about 10 hours 7 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 10 hours 7 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 2012. 552 pages, about 151,800 words.
21 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 16 hours 52 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 10 hours 7 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 6 hours 20 minutes |
The page count is the median across 14 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Overview: Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday-in evolutionary time-when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions. The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years-a past that has mostly vanished-and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today. This is Jared Diamond's most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn't romanticize traditional societies-after all, we are shocked by some of their practices-but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. A characteristically provocative, enlightening, and entertaining book, The World Until Yesterday will be essential and delightful reading.
Subjects: Social life and customs, Social evolution, Dani (New Guinean people), Cultural assimilation, Social change, History
