The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 102
32,123 public-domain books, summarised. Page 102 of 670.
U.S. Copyright Renewals, 1973 January - June
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
A massive mid-century ledger captures the exact moment when American creative works faced their critical twenty-eight-year legal deadline. Its pages preserve the paper trail of Mid-Century literature, industrial machinery, and popular culture as authors and corporate heirs fought to retain their intellectual rights.
Charles Dickens and other Victorians
Arthur Quiller-Couch
A critic cuts through century-old literary dust to evaluate how nineteenth-century storytellers actually constructed their fictional worlds.
Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865
Ward Hill Lamon
A personal guardian shielding a tender-hearted statesman from political strife and hidden threats finds that the hardest duty is surviving the man he could not save.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Desire, greed, and magic drive travelers across vast seas and haunted deserts in a endless loop of peril, ruin, and miraculous escape.
The Curiosities of Ale & Beer: An Entertaining History: (Illustrated with over Fifty Quaint Cuts)
John Bickerdyke
This detailed, historical study traces how barley-wine shaped English life, labor, and leisure across the centuries. Packed with medieval ballads, court trials, and industrial lore, it is a affectionate, highly readable celebration of national brewing traditions.
Young Mr. Barter's Repentance: From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray
David Christie Murray
When a sudden financial collapse shatters a reputable London merchant, a trail of missing bank-notes unleashes a tangled web of greed, blackmail, and desperate deceit.
Favorite Fairy Tales: The Childhood Choice of Representative Men and Women
Various
A simple wooden box can hold a kingdom, provided it is unlocked by a child's hand.
Little Wars
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
Toy soldiers, paper landscapes, and strict time limits come together to transform backyard play into a rigorous, civilized alternative to real-world slaughter.
The secret of the old clock
Carolyn Keene
A determination to see justice done leads a quick-thinking young woman into a web of vanished fortunes and hidden clues.
Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremburg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946, Volume 03
Various
A legal record documents the systematic assembly of evidence detailing how a modern state turned aggressive war and state-sponsored murder into routine bureaucratic policy.
Unto This Last, and Other Essays on Political Economy
John Ruskin
An impassioned challenge to Victorian industrialism reclaims economic theory from cold mathematics, insisting that national wealth must be measured by human well-being, artistic integrity, and moral responsibility rather than mere financial accumulation.
Concerning the Spiritual in Art
Wassily Kandinsky
An urgent plea to rescue painting from mere mimicry, this text maps out a path toward pure abstraction by treating line and color as direct conduits to the human soul.
Curious Facts in the History of Insects
Frank Cowan
A vast archive of human fascination, fear, and folk wisdom reveals how deeply the insect world has shaped human cultures across centuries and continents.
Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3
Charles Eliot
A vast geographical, textual, and historical survey traces how Indian religious systems traveled across Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Asia, transforming native cultures while reshaping their own internal doctrines.
Les Misérables, v. 4/5: The Idyll and the Epic
Victor Hugo
A sudden romance bloomed in a hidden Paris garden is threatened by secret pasts and cut short by the roar of revolution in the streets of 1832.
The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, volume 2 (of 2): By His Wife, Isabel Burton
Burton, Isabel, Lady
A devoted wife chronicling the chaotic final decades of a legendary Victorian polymath captures both the brilliant intellect and the tragic neglect of a restless mind stranded in diplomatic exile.
Grammar-land
M. L. Nesbitt
A stern judge, a pedantic sergeant, and a cast of theatrical words clash in a courtroom to settle who truly owns the English language.
How to Observe: Morals and Manners
Harriet Martineau
Observation is an art that requires philosophical rigor, moral empathy, and systematic mechanical methods to unlock the true character of any society.
McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader
William Holmes McGuffey
A masterclass in nineteenth-century American rhetoric and moral instruction, this text transforms public speaking and classic literature into an essential guide for mind, voice, and character.
Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures
Henry Rankin Poore
To truly master picture-making, an artist must bridge the daunting chasm between copying a isolated model in an art class and harmonizing a subject within its complex background.
The Secret History of the Court of Justinian
Procopius
Behind the glittering mosaic facade of sixth-century Byzantium lies a raw, venomous chronicle of greed, absolute power, and private betrayal.
A collection of Latin maxims and phrases literally translated: Intended for the use of students for all legal examinations
John N. Cotterell
Mastering the principles behind legal Latin gives a student a reliable blueprint to navigate the vast, chaotic sea of judicial precedents.
A Wonder Book for Girls & Boys
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Immortal fables escape their ancient marble frames as a country college student spins six timeless Greek myths into lively, romantic tales for a houseful of eager children during a snowy berkshire winter.
Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 3 of 4: N-R)
Unknown
An exhaustive system of verbal record captures the English language as it stood at the turn of the twentieth century, organizing human knowledge from technical science to poetic archaisms.
Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion
Beatrice E. (Beatrice Elizabeth) Clay
A realm of magic, chivalry, and tragic betrayal comes alive through classic legends of Arthurian knights and ancient Welsh heroes.
Works of Martin Luther, with Introductions and Notes (Volume II)
Martin Luther
True spiritual freedom arises when faith dismantles human tyranny, restoring individual conscience to divine promise while binding the believer in voluntary, loving service to every neighbor.
Life and Letters of Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Behind the formidable architecture of modern evolutionary theory lies a modest home in Kent, where an endlessly curious naturalist spent decades patiently interrogating pigeons, orchids, and earthworms.
Narrative and Legendary Poems, Complete: Volume I of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
A landscape of rugged coasts, dark woods, and quiet hearths comes to life in verse, where human faith and historical memory collide against the silence of the wilderness.
Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented
William Tebb
Terrifying documented accounts and precise medical observations illuminate the profound societal danger of mistaking profound suspended animation for actual death.
Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore
Elizabeth Mary Wright
Centuries of living local speech and communal memory come to life in a study that captures the precise, poetic ways working people across England name their world.
Among Famous Books
John Kelman
Human history is defined by a perpetual, internal tug-of-war between basic worldly desires and the reach for higher spiritual truth.
Church History (Volumes 1-3)
J. H. (Johann Heinrich) Kurtz
A sweeping, rigorous record of Christian faith as it evolves across two millennia, contending with empire, intellectual schism, and the raw mechanics of worldly power.
Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Jaime Luciano Balmes
The mind does not merely absorb the world through sensory impressions; it possesses an active, rational structure capable of reaching fundamental, necessary truths.
Mark Twain's Letters
Mark Twain
A private life of high ambition, crushing debt, and unquenchable humor unfolds through the frank, unedited mail of an American master.
Short Stories for High Schools
Unknown
A young country needs a literature that moves at its own breakneck pace. This collection captures American life through compact, vivid, and surprising narratives.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
A clever storyteller staves off execution by spinning endless tales of trickster cobblers, underwater kingdoms, and royal intrigue across the medieval Islamic world, bound together by exhaustive scholarly commentaries on Eastern culture.
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 01
Robert Louis Stevenson
A young Scottish writer wanders through foreign riverways, French mountain trails, and his own storied hometown, transforming simple observation into a masterclass in atmospheric travel prose.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Cat" to "Celt": Volume 5, Slice 5
Various
A vast array of knowledge spans from ancient catacombs and forgotten poets to modern warfare and prehistoric stone tools. It captures the human impulse to record, classify, and comprehend every corner of the known world.
The Theory of Psychoanalysis
C. G. (Carl Gustav) Jung
Human psychological distress stems not from long-buried childhood shocks, but from an individual's immediate hesitation when facing the daunting tasks of adult life.
Armenia, Travels and Studies (Volume 1 of 2): The Russian Provinces
H. F. B. (Harry Finnis Blosse) Lynch
A high-altitude expedition across mountainous borderlands reveals how landscape, imperial policy, and ancient religious memory shape a resilient, imperiled civilization.
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon
Power crumbles not in a single catastrophic instant, but through the slow erosion of institutions, the rise of competing faiths, and the unrelenting pressure of foreign forces across centuries of transformation.
Maud, and Other Poems
Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron
A bitter young man mourns his father's ruined life and violent death in a dark hollow, nursing hatred for the wealthy estate owner whose financial schemes drove his family to disaster.
My Ántonia
Willa Cather
An orphaned Virginia boy moves to the Nebraskan frontier, where his bond with a bold Bohemian girl defines the landscape of his memory and the trajectory of his life.
Rewards and Fairies
Rudyard Kipling
Across the ancient fields of the English countryside, two children step into whispered encounters with figures summoned from three thousand years of forgotten history.
Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists
George Berkeley
Stripping away physical substance to leave only perception, two thinkers walk a summer garden and rebuild reality from the ground up.
Ask a Foolish Question
Robert Sheckley
An all-knowing cosmic entity waits for creatures to ask the truth of the universe, only to realize that true knowledge remains forever unreachable to those who lack the understanding to frame the proper inquiry.
Essays in the Art of Writing
Robert Louis Stevenson
Great writing depends on hidden mechanics, absolute moral honesty, and the unvarnished realities of the creative life.
Fairies and Fusiliers
Robert Graves
Youthful daydreams of fairies and ancient legends clash violently with the cold, muddy horrors of the Western Front, forcing a wounded soldier to rebuild his shattered world through verse.