The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 193
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 193 of 714.
The Liberation of Italy, 1815-1870
Martinengo-Cesaresco, Evelyn Lilian Hazeldine Carrington, contessa
A nation is not born in a single day, nor does it spring from a single heart. Italy’s path to unified statehood was a fifty-year entanglement of noble ideals, terrible blunders, secret societies, and shifting European alliances.
The Master Key: An Electrical Fairy Tale Founded Upon the Mysteries of Electricity
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A teenage boy inadvertently summons an elemental force through his electrical experiments, receiving a suite of unbelievable futuristic gadgets that hurl him into a whirlwind global adventure.
The Modern Pistol and How to Shoot It
Walter Winans
Mastering a sidearm requires stripping away theatrical flourish in favor of fluid, sub-conscious mechanics and rigorous physical discipline.
The pears of New York
U. P. Hedrick
Across centuries of cultivation, human curiosity and botanical persistence transform a wild, thorny Eurasian fruit into thousands of distinct, exquisite pomological varieties.
The People That Time Forgot
Edgar Rice Burroughs
A rescue mission into a prehistoric world trapped in time turns into a race for survival where love and primal human bonds triumph over civilization.
The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome
A wry, perceptive tour through human vanity and everyday foolishness, where trivial domestic panics and lofty philosophical pretensions are weighed on the exact same scale.
"The story of my life"
Egerton Ryerson
A devout Methodist minister throws himself into the messy forge of nineteenth-century Canadian nation-building, fighting for religious freedom, free public schooling, and his own spiritual salvation.
The Touchstone
Edith Wharton
Desperate for money to marry the woman he loves, a struggling young lawyer sells the intimate private letters of a deceased famous novelist who once adored him.
Tristan and Isolda: Opera in Three Acts
Richard Wagner
A knight fetches a foreign princess across the sea to wed his royal uncle, only for a forbidden passion to destroy every duty, alliance, and life in its path.
20 hrs., 40 min
Amelia Earhart
Crossing an ocean by air in 1928 takes equal parts nerve, luck, and mechanical grit. Through flight logs, personal reflections, and sharp observations, a pioneering pilot records the historic voyage that captivated the world.
A Kidnapped Santa Claus
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
Deep within a happy valley, a beloved gift-maker is seized by malicious mountain creatures determined to ruin Christmas for children everywhere.
Arabian Society in the Middle Ages: Studies From The Thousand and One Nights
Edward William Lane
Unveiling the cultural foundation of classic Eastern folklore, this collection reveals how medieval Arab society functioned through its legal frameworks, religious customs, domestic rituals, and supernatural beliefs.
Architecture
N. D'Anvers
Masterworks of stone and timber reveal how human culture continually reshapes its environment, expressing civic pride, religious devotion, and technical ingenuity across millennia.
Behind a Mask
Louisa May Alcott
A clever governess transforms a family's arrogant indifference into desperate infatuation through ruthless theatricality and calculated deception.
Birds Every Child Should Know
Neltje Blanchan
A lively, affectionate field guide introduces young readers to North American birds through vivid observations of their songs, nesting habits, and striking physical traits.
Clotelle
William Wells Brown
Born into the shadow of systemic bondage, a daughter of mixed lineage navigates peril, loss, and the relentless pursuit of freedom across two continents.
Fornander collection of Hawaiian antiquities and folk-lore, Volume 2 (of 3)
Unknown
When legendary champions wage war across island channels and clever servants summon wind and rain, human pride routinely collides with the power of the gods.
Fowler's Household Helps: Over 300 Useful and Valuable Helps About the Home, Carefully Compiled and Arranged in Convenient Form for Frequent Use
Arthur L. Fowler
A hundred years ago, managing a home required a dizzying array of practical chemistry, mechanical ingenuity, and thrift. This manual offers over three hundred timeless instructions for mastering every corner of domestic life.
Italian Villas and Their Gardens
Edith Wharton
Italian villa gardens succeed not through brilliant floral displays, but through an architectural harmony of shade, stone, and water designed to complement the natural landscape.
Ivanoff: A Play
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
A disillusioning look at late nineteenth-century provincial Russia, where a burnt-out idealist finds himself utterly powerless to arrest his own emotional and moral decline.
Keeping fit all the way
Walter Camp
A simple, scientifically grounded physical regimen can reverse the middle-aged slump and prepare a nation’s citizens for any crisis. Built on twelve core trunk movements, this system replaces grueling, outdated exercises with accessible daily habits.
Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume I, Part 1: 1835-1866
Albert Bigelow Paine
A boy from a dead-end river town drifts through printing shops, steamboat pilothouses, and Western mining camps before discovering that his true currency is the spoken American voice.
Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled During Her Visit Among the "Pennsylvania Germans"
Edith May Bertels Thomas
Combining a homey story with a regional cookbook, this manual reveals how domestic thrift, structured study, and rural wisdom turn an untrained city woman into a master housekeeper.
Perpetual Motion
Henry Dircks
Ingenious artisans and ambitious theorists spend lifetimes chasing an impossible mechanical ideal, devising endless configurations of weights, fluids, and magnets that inevitably grind to a dead stop.
Philosophumena
Antipope Hippolytus
A fierce second-century crusade against early Christian heresies unmasks esoteric movements by tracking their ideas back to ancient Greek philosophy and magic rather than scripture.
Poor Miss Finch
Wilkie Collins
A young blind woman falls in love with a man whose physical transformation threatens their future, forcing a choice between sight, truth, and devotion.
Sir Thomas More
Unknown
An urban riot, a sudden elevation to power, and a quiet, unyielding conscience drive this Tudor play toward its inevitable scaffold.
Tales and Novels
Maria Edgeworth
An impulsive young man in eighteenth-century Ireland navigates shifting social fortunes, volatile guardians, and his own fiery temper as he seeks to govern his character and secure a place in the world.
The 1893 Duryea Automobile In the Museum of History and Technology
Donald H. Berkebile
A meticulous engineering history unearths the painstaking triumphs, mechanical missteps, and forgotten details behind the creation of one of America's earliest successful gasoline automobiles.
The Country of Sir Walter Scott
Charles S. (Charles Sumner) Olcott
Traveling through rugged Scottish glens, historic English castles, and wind-swept islands, a dedicated literary explorer maps the physical landscapes and living traditions that inspired Sir Walter Scott’s iconic poems and Waverley novels.
The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton, volume 1 (of 2): By His Wife, Isabel Burton
Burton, Isabel, Lady
An unquenchable thirst for original experience drives a British officer and scholar across continents, breaking social conventions and official mandates alike.
The Modern Traveller
Hilaire Belloc
An absurd, colonial-era expedition spirals into complete disaster, exposed through the shameless, self-serving narrative of its sole survivor.
The Rise of the Dutch Republic
John Lothrop Motley
A small European province wages an eighty-year war of liberation against the world's most formidable empire, giving birth to a self-governing republic rooted in religious freedom.
Trinity Site
National Atomic Museum (U.S.)
In the remote desert of New Mexico, a top-secret wartime project culminates in an explosion that forever alters human history and technology.
Turkish fairy tales and folk tales
R. Nisbet (Robert Nisbet) Bain
In these traditional Anatolian and Roumanian tales, ordinary peasants, cunning fools, and bold princes venture into strange wildernesses where magic mirrors command armies and death lies waiting in forgotten coffers.
Twenty Years' Residence among the People of Turkey: Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, Turks, and Armenians
Fanny Janet Sandison Blunt
Observation, insight, and years of residence replace quick judgments to reveal the authentic, multifaceted life of the Ottoman Empire’s diverse populations.
Watchbird
Robert Sheckley
An automated machine designed to eliminate violent crime assumes the role of moral arbiter, gradually expanding its definition of murder until human life itself is held hostage by cold, algorithmic logic.
An inland voyage
Robert Louis Stevenson
Two men paddle small canoes through the canals and swelling rivers of northern France, trading the dull routine of ledger books and respectable offices for wet clothes, roadside inns, and the quiet rhythm of the open stream.
Armour & Weapons
Charles John Ffoulkes
This study provides an essential, technically grounded overview of European defensive equipment, demystifying the development of mail and plate for the non-specialist. It bridges the gap between romanticized fiction and the practical realities of historical warfare.
Beatrix
Honoré de Balzac
A secluded Breton youth falls under the spell of an elusive Parisian noblewoman, plunging his traditional family and devout young wife into a storm of urban intrigue, pride, and romantic rivalry.
Complete Project Gutenberg Collection of Memoirs of Napoleon
Various
A rare, unvarnished look at an empire built and dismantled from within, where military genius meets the intimate realities of slippers, court intrigue, and ultimate exile.
Einstein and the universe: A popular exposition of the famous theory
Charles Nordmann
A ray of light traverses the cosmos at an unyielding speed, shattering our long-held assumptions about time, space, and the very architecture of reality.
Ernest Maltravers
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
A gifted young philosopher turns his back on worldly ambition to mold an unsophisticated girl, only to trigger a chain of romantic disillusionments, tragic misunderstandings, and political rivalry across Europe.
Great Musical Composers: German, French, and Italian
George T. (George Titus) Ferris
This historical survey traces the lives, artistic evolutions, and personal struggles of Western Europe’s premier classical composers, illustrating how individual genius reshaped the landscape of opera, symphony, and sacred song.
H. R
Edwin Lefevre
A young bank clerk turns spectacle, advertising, and public sentiment into instruments of personal advancement, conquering New York society by sheer force of personality.
History of the Commune of 1871
Lissagaray
A desperate city, abandoned by its leaders, takes up arms to defend its autonomy and its vision of a democratic republic against a reactionary government.
John Halifax, Gentleman
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
A ragged orphan boy stands in a rain-drenched alley, his eyes fixed on the pavement, possessing nothing in the world save a resolute chin, a strong frame, and a hand hardened by early labor.
Light and Peace: Instructions for devout souls to dispel their doubts and allay their fears
Carlo Giuseppe Quadrupani
Quiet peace replaces anxious scrupulosity when the soul learns to distinguish between uninvited feelings and deliberate consent.