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How long does it take to read You Are Not So Smart?

David McRaney

You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney takes about 5 hours 42 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 5 hours 42 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2011. 311 pages, about 85,525 words.

12 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 9 hours 30 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 5 hours 42 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 3 hours 34 minutes

The page count is the median across 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

An entertaining illumination of the stupid beliefs that make us feel wise, based on the popular blog of the same name. Whether you’re deciding which smartphone to purchase or which politician to believe, you think you are a rational being whose every decision is based on cool, detached logic. But here’s the truth: You are not so smart. You’re just as deluded as the rest of us—but that’s okay, because being deluded is part of being human. Growing out of David McRaney’s popular blog, You Are Not So Smart reveals that every decision we make, every thought we contemplate, and every emotion we feel comes with a story we tell ourselves to explain them. But often these stories aren’t true. Each short chapter—covering topics such as Learned Helplessness, Selling Out, and the Illusion of Transparency—is like a psychology course with all the boring parts taken out. Bringing together popular science and psychology with humor and wit, You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of our irrational, thoroughly human behavior.

Subjects: Defense mechanisms (Psychology), Reason, Perception, Truth, Psychological aspects, Thought and thinking

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