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All free summaries — page 272
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 272 of 714.
Theory of the Earth, With Proofs and Illustrations, Volume 2 (of 4)
James Hutton
Earth is an active, self-renewing engine where solid rock continuously collapses into soil, rivers carve valleys, and ancient seabed strata are elevated to form mountain ranges across an endless cycle of time.
What's Bred in the Bone
Grant Allen
Identical twins, hidden parentage, and a mysterious murder collide when an innocent man flees a crime committed by a high-standing judge.
Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony Simply Explained: A Practical Treatise Embracing Complete and Detailed Explanations of the Theory and Practice of Modern Radio Apparatus and Its Present Day Applications, Together With a Chapter on the Possibilities of Its Future Development
Alfred Powell Morgan
A century before wireless connectivity became ubiquitous, early experimenters were learning how to send invisible waves surging through the ether to carry voice and telegraph signals around the world.
Zicci: A Tale
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
An English painter in Naples abandons his mortal love to pursue the terrifying secrets of an immortal Rosicrucian sage.
A Fair Mystery: The Story of a Coquette
Charlotte M. Brame
A baby’s innocent bedtime prayer shatters a father facing ruin, setting off a chain of hidden origins and dangerous passions.
A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium
Hugh Gibson
An American diplomat in occupied Brussels records the sudden collapse of European peace, documenting war through official cablegrams, refugee corridors, and the quiet courage of a captive city.
A Lad of Grit: A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea in Restoration Times
Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman
A young boy in Restoration England loses his father to a Roundhead's bullet, setting off a relentless quest across high seas and shattered battlefields to claim his stolen birthright.
Adam Hepburn's Vow: A Tale of Kirk and Covenant
Annie S. Swan
A child rides a pony toward Edinburgh into a gathering dusk, unaware that the kingdom above her is about to tear itself apart over the right of free worship.
Allan's Wife
H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
A young Englishman wanders deep into the uncharted South African wilderness, finding both catastrophic danger and a love that alters his life forever.
Anthology of modern Indian poetry
Unknown
Bound by no single voice or province, a vast landscape of longing and spiritual awakening opens across these gathered verses.
Buried Cities, Volume 1: Pompeii
Jennie Hall
The earth opens up and buries a thriving Roman city under falling ash and rock, leaving a young Greek slave and a sick boy to fight their way toward the sea for freedom.
Camp and Trail
Stewart Edward White
A practical guide to wilderness travel stripped of all romantic illusion, this manual offers meticulous advice on gear, pack trains, and camp life for anyone seeking to explore the backwoods safely and comfortably.
Chocolate
Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma
A rare window into early modern medicine, this seventeenth-century treatise presents chocolate not as a confection, but as a potent, complex drug demanding precise scientific evaluation.
Cuba, Old and New
Albert G. (Albert Gardner) Robinson
Albert G. Robinson’s survey traces Cuba’s path from its initial discovery by Christopher Columbus to its establishment as an independent nation under American oversight, highlighting its geography, social customs, and economic assets along the way.
Elsie Dinsmore
Martha Finley
Motherless, wealthy, and deeply devout, an eight-year-old girl in the antebellum South longs for the affection of her aloof father, whose return threatens to shatter her quiet life of faith and solitary gentleness.
Every Girl's Library, Volume 8 of 10: A Collection of Appropriate and Instructive Reading for Girls of All Ages from the Best Authors of All Time
Unknown
A rich anthology of classic literature guides young readers through tales of high virtue, tragic royalty, romantic folly, and philosophical quietude.
France and England in North America, Part V: Count Frontenac, New France, Louis XIV
Francis Parkman
A tale of colonial rivalry, military strategy, and the clash of empires in 17th-century North America.
From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon
J. A. (John Augustine) Zahm
A journey along the world’s oldest trade and transit routes reveals a layered landscape where ancient myth, imperial conquest, and spiritual devotion continuously bleed into one another.
Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young
Jacob Abbott
True authority over a child is absolute, but maintaining it requires patience, sympathy, and steady consistency rather than anger or deceitful tricks.
Getting Gold: A Practical Treatise for Prospectors, Miners and Students
J. C. F. (Joseph Colin Francis) Johnson
Heavy to get and light to hold, gold demands every ounce of human ingenuity before it yields its fortune to the wilderness.
Grasses
H. Marshall (Harry Marshall) Ward
A hand-lens and a patient eye unlock the hidden, intricate world beneath our feet, where every blade, sheath, and stem reveals a masterclass in structural adaptation.
Handy Andy: A Tale of Irish Life. Volume 2
Samuel Lover
Mistaken identities, subterranean hideouts, and furious feuds drive this sprawling comedic tale of nineteenth-century Irish society.
Heart of Man
George Edward Woodberry
Poetry, politics, and religion spring from a single source deep in the human spirit, revealing that our highest cultural ideals and everyday democratic strivings are woven from the same universal heart.
Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.)
Arnold Bennett
A young woman returns to her native English pottery town and promptly takes charge of her crusty, misanthropic grand-uncle's household and heart.
Her Lord and Master
Martha Morton
A spoiled Indiana heiress marries an aristocratic English lord, expecting to rule him as she does everyone else, only to learn that real love demands self-restraint and genuine sacrifice.
Historic Ornament, Vol. 1 (of 2): Treatise on decorative art and architectural ornament
James Ward
Across centuries and continents, human hands have carved, woven, and painted the same fundamental geometry into vastly different sacred traditions.
History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce
John Lothrop Motley
A forty-year struggle against imperial Spain culminates in an unprecedented victory: a young Protestant republic forces a global superpower to recognize its absolute independence.
In the Russian Ranks: A Soldier's Account of the Fighting in Poland
John Morse
A quiet holiday transformed into a brutal struggle for survival when an English civilian found himself trapped on the Eastern Front, taking up arms with the Tsar's army to fight his way across the bloodied fields of Poland.
Journal of a tour in Asia Minor
William Martin Leake
** A meticulous record of a nineteenth-century journey through the rugged, ruins-rich interior of Anatolia, this work serves as an essential bridge between classical geography and the modern world.
Kansas Women in Literature
Nettie Garmer Barker
Pride in a state is built not merely on its agricultural bounty, but on the intellectual and creative gifts of its women, who forge art and community on the prairie.
King Henry IV, Part 1
William Shakespeare
A royal throne gained by usurpation trembles under the weight of open rebellion, while a reckless heir spends his days in tavern revelry alongside a charismatic thief before stepping up to claim his warlike destiny.
Leather: From the Raw Material to the Finished Product
K. J. Adcock
An exhaustive technical survey of leather production, tracing every stage from raw hide collection to the finely finished trade good.
Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I: Including His Answers to the Clergy, His Oration at His Brother's Grave, Etc., Etc
Robert Green Ingersoll
A sweeping, fiery assault on religious dogma, this collection of nineteenth-century lectures champions human reason, scientific progress, and individual liberty over ancient superstition and fear.
Life in the Clearings versus the Bush
Susanna Moodie
Moving beyond her grueling early years on the Canadian frontier, a mature settler documents the remarkable growth of young towns, civic institutions, and social life as backwoods wilderness yields to thriving civilization.
Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover, volume 2 (of 2)
Dr. (John) Doran
An intimate, sharply observed record of the Georgian court exposes how domestic friction, royal vanity, and political duty collided to shape the lives of Britain’s Hanoverian queens and their ill-fated households.
London Days: A Book of Reminiscences
Arthur Warren
An eighteen-year-old American arrives in late-Victorian London and spends decades absorbing its glittering social, political, and cultural circles before capturing the era's grandest personalities in sharp, affectionate detail.
My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale
Thomas Woolner
An earnest, elevate-the-spirit Victorian verse narrative that turns devastating personal bereavement into a lifelong vow of civic duty and high artistic purpose.
My Wonderful Visit
Charlie Chaplin
A famous comedian escapes his grueling Hollywood routine for a European holiday, only to find that his immense global fame follows him every step of the way.
New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century: A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments
John Morrison
A long-standing belief holds that Indian life remains eternally unchanged, yet under the surface, new social, political, and religious ideas are actively reshaping the nation.
Notes on the Iroquois
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
Centuries of European encroachment failed to erase the Six Nations, whose deep history, political brilliance, and enduring social structures are captured here through early field statistics, ancient traditions, and physical archaeological remains.
Our Benevolent Feudalism
William J. (William James) Ghent
A quiet restructuring of American society is underway, trading democratic independence for a system of corporate vassalage where benevolent industrial magnates hold total sway over working life.
Pleasures of the telescope: An Illustrated Guide for Amateur Astronomers and a Popular Description of the Chief Wonders of the Heavens for General Readers
Garrett Putman Serviss
An amateur astronomer points a modest glass toward the sky and discovers that the universe yields its deepest wonders to patience rather than grand observatories.
Rainbow gold
Unknown
Curated specifically to fit within a young reader’s hands, this intimate anthology sidesteps dusty, moralizing verse in favor of vibrant rhythms, mythical encounters, and high-spirited narrative songs.
Roman Holidays, and Others
William Dean Howells
omega of winter light, grand ruined monuments, and the casual rhythms of modern street life.
Status Quo
Mack Reynolds
A government agent uncovers a mysterious movement plotting to disrupt society by sabotaging records and counterfeiting money.
Tales from the German. Volume II
C. F. van der (Carl Franz) Velde
A young man loses his way in the darkness of fanatical times, only to discover that the truest peace lies in the quiet circle of a modest home.
The Cruise of the Dream Ship
Ralph Stock
A dream of open water and a small wooden ship becomes a twelve-thousand-mile reality across two oceans.
The Daughter of an Empress
L. (Luise) Mühlbach
A young orphan raised in a secluded Italian villa discovers she is the secret daughter of a dead Russian empress, only to be drawn into a deadly web of court politics, foreign intrigue, and betrayal.