How long does it take to read War and Peace and War?
The Life Cycles of Imperial Nations
Peter Turchin
War and Peace and War by Peter Turchin takes about 7 hours 26 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 7 hours 26 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2005. 405 pages, about 111,375 words.
15 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 12 hours 23 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 7 hours 26 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 4 hours 38 minutes |
The page count is the median across 5 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Like Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Peter Turchin in War and Peace and War uses his expertise in evolutionary biology to make a highly original argument about the rise and fall of empires. Turchin argues that the key to the formation of an empire is a society's capacity for collective action. He demonstrates that high levels of cooperation are found where people have to band together to fight off a common enemy, and that this kind of cooperation led to the formation of the Roman and Russian empires, and the United States. But as empires grow, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, conflict replaces cooperation, and dissolution inevitably follows. Eloquently argued and rich with historical examples, War and Peace and War offers a bold new theory about the course of world history.
Subjects: Historiometry, Mathematical models, Nonfiction, World history, History, History, mathematical models
