How long does it take to read Worldly Goods?
a new history of the Renaissance
Lisa Jardine
Worldly Goods by Lisa Jardine takes about 8 hours 48 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 8 hours 48 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1996. 480 pages, about 132,000 words.
18 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 14 hours 40 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 48 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 30 minutes |
The page count is the median across 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
The flowering of civilization, the rebirth of classical scholarship, and the emergence of some of the greatest artists and thinkers the world has known: this is the traditional view of the Renaissance. In this lively, provocative, and wholly absorbing new book, Lisa Jardine offers a radical new interpretation, arguing that the creation of culture during the Renaissance was inextricably tied to the creation of wealth - that the expansion of commerce spurred the expansion of thought. While Europe's crowned heads and merchant entrepreneurs competed with each other to acquire works of art from the leading artists of the day, vicious commercial battles were being fought over silks and spices, and over who should control the centers for international trade around the globe. The rapidly growing market for printed books - a new commodity seized upon with equal enthusiasm by investors and consumers - disseminated the "new learning" via publishing houses and printing presses across Europe, stimulating the evolution of the European intellectual tradition as much by accident as by design. Bringing this opulent epoch to life in all its material splendor and competitive acquisitiveness, Lisa Jardine examines Renaissance culture from its western borders in Christendom to its eastern reaches in the Islamic Ottoman Empire.
Subjects: Renaissance, History, Material culture, Economic history, Economic conditions, Histoire économique
