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All free summaries — page 86
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 86 of 714.
History of the World War
March, Francis A., Jr.
Millions of young men died across Europe to teach militaristic nations that humanity will no longer tolerate the exploitation of free peoples.
Motion pictures, 1960-1969
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
A comprehensive catalog of American film registrations across a decade reveals the vast, kaleidoscopic landscape of 1960s moving image culture.
The Conduct of Life
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Courageously facing the rigid mechanics of existence, a mind discovers that personal power, practical work, and noble ideals can master raw circumstance.
The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 5 (of 6)
the Elder Pliny
A sweeping ancient encyclopedia surveys the hidden powers of nature, cataloging thousands of cures extracted from forest trees, roadside weeds, animal glands, and mineral waters. It captures classical antiquity’s desperate attempt to order a chaotic world.
The Philosophy of Spinoza
Benedictus de Spinoza
A radical, systematic dismantling of traditional theology unfolds into a precise mechanical framework of the universe, offering a rigorous blueprint for human freedom through pure reason.
William Shakespeare
Victor Hugo
A passionate defense of artistic genius expands into an sweeping meditation on human thought, social progress, and the eternal conflict between political tyranny and creative freedom.
Napoleon's Marshals
R. P. Dunn-Pattison
An extraordinary aggregate of military talent supported the rise and fall of the First French Empire. This biographical study evaluates the twenty-six soldiers granted the marshal’s baton under Napoleon, tracing how individual character shaped the map of Europe.
The History of Signboards, from the Earliest times to the Present Day
John Camden Hotten
Streets, taverns, and shopfronts reveal the hidden history of everyday life when viewed through the forgotten art hanging directly above their doorways.
Types of News Writing
Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
A practical guide to early twentieth-century American reporting demonstrates how daily life, tragic accidents, and political drama are transformed into structured prose.
Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency: A Lecture Delivered before the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London
Nikola Tesla
Blinding electric sparks, glowing vacuum bulbs, and wireless current vibrations transform an Victorian lecture hall into a staging ground for the future of power.
The Story of Madras
Glyn Barlow
On a windswept stretch of the Coromandel Coast, a modest seventeenth-century English outpost slowly transforms into a sprawling, multi-layered Indian metropolis through decades of siege, trade, and administrative ambition.
The tale of Betsy Butterfly
Arthur Scott Bailey
Among the sunny meadows of Pleasant Valley, a gentle butterfly navigates the comical misunderstandings, petty jealousies, and quirky neighbors of the meadow world.
Moral Principles in Education
John Dewey
True character is not built by memorizing ethical lectures, but by living in a classroom that functions as a cooperative, vibrant social community.
Barry Lyndon
William Makepeace Thackeray
An audacious Irish fortune-hunter blunders and bravadoes his way across eighteenth-century Europe, charting his rise from penniless provincial duels to high-society opulence—and his inevitable, self-inflicted ruin.
Composition
Arthur W. (Arthur Wesley) Dow
Fine art arises not from the passive copying of nature, but from the deliberate, harmonic arrangement of line, mass, and color.
The Child-Voice in Singing: Treated from a physiological and a practical standpoint and especially adapted to schools and boy choirs
Francis E. (Francis Edward) Howard
Shouting damages young vocal cords, yet thousands of children are taught to force their lower registers into a harsh, unnatural scream. This handbook grounds vocal training in physical anatomy to save children's voices.
Barkham Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889
Barkham Burroughs
A single volume of late-nineteenth-century practical advice promises complete self-sufficiency, guiding readers through commercial etiquette, emergency medicine, household recipes, and the surprising wonders of the natural world.
Divine Comedy, Cary's Translation, Complete
Dante Alighieri
A journey across the three realms of the dead tests a living soul against the depths of human sin, the painful work of purification, and the blinding light of divine order.
Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive
Yule, Henry, Sir
A monumental dictionary tracks the global journeys of words, mapping how centuries of trade, conquest, and encounter transformed everyday English across the Indian subcontinent and beyond.
Fruits of Queensland
Albert H. (Albert Henry) Benson
An expansive survey of subtropical potential, this book outlines how a diverse landscape can host almost every cultivated fruit on Earth.
Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England
Edward Lewes Cutts
Long before the Reformation transformed the countryside, an intricate network of local priests, noble patrons, and parish guilds shaped the daily spiritual and social rhythms of medieval English life.
The Autobiography of an Indian Princess
Maharani of Cooch Behar Sunity Devee
Born into a reformist Calcutta home, an Indian princess navigates the strict demands of royal tradition and Victorian high society without losing her devotion to family.
The Edda, Volume 1: The Divine Mythology of the North
Lucy Winifred Faraday
A clear, scholarly guide to northern paganism, this study dismantles common misconceptions about the Icelandic Eddas to reveal the vibrant, dramatic, and surprisingly original world of Norse myth.
The Jew of Malta
Christopher Marlowe
A villainous merchant turns his infinite capacity for malice against the rulers of Malta after they seize his fortune to pay off an invading army.
The poems of Heine
Heinrich Heine
A sweeping poetic collection captures the ecstasy and agony of Romantic passion, shifting seamlessly from delicate stanzas of heartbreak to biting social satire and mythic visions.
The Robbers
Friedrich Schiller
A bitter, envious younger brother uses malicious lies to drive a celebrated heir into exile, sparking a violent cycle of outlawry, familial devastation, and tragic ruin.
Holborn and Bloomsbury
Walter Besant
London’s architectural memory reveals itself through a systematic perambulation, uncovering layers of civic history embedded within ordinary parish streets.
North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State
Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of North Dakota
A land of sweeping horizons, ancient river valleys, and harsh winters comes vividly to life in this Depression-era portrait of the Northern Prairie State.
The 1991 CIA World Factbook
United States. Central Intelligence Agency
A dense, meticulously structured survey of the world’s sovereign states and territories offers an uncompromising snapshot of global politics, economics, and demographics at the close of the Cold War.
Jane Austen and Her Times
G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
A quiet Hampshire parsonage frames the life of an sharp-eyed novelist whose modest domestic world reveals the grand architecture of Georgian society.
The Inspector-General
Nikolai Vasilevich Gogol
Mistaken identity turns a provincial town’s web of petty corruption inside out when a penniless stranger arrives.
A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land: Together with Personal Reminiscences of the 'Inimitable Boz' Therein Collected
William R. (William Richard) Hughes
Footsteps echo down the centuries when a dedicated reader traces the physical paths of a beloved author's fictional worlds.
An Autobiography of Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope
An unsparing account of literary labor reveals how an unpromising boyhood turned into a life of disciplined output, professional pride, and quiet self-determination.
Papa's own girl: A novel
Marie Stevens Howland
A small New England town becomes the unlikely launching pad for a sweeping experiment in cooperative living and women's self-determination.
The Great American Fraud: The Patent Medicine Evil
Samuel Hopkins Adams
HOOK At the turn of the twentieth century, Americans spent millions of dollars to drug, poison, and intoxicate themselves. An alliance of fraudulent remedy makers and a silenced press kept the public blind to the lethal deception.
Mary Stuart: Celebrated Crimes
Alexandre Dumas
A crown promises power, but for the House of Stuart, it offers only an inevitable path to betrayal, captivity, and the executioner’s axe. Alexandre Dumas chronicles the bloody history and doomed end of Scotland’s most tragic queen.
St Baldred of the Bass, a Pictish legend
James Miller
A collection of Scottish verse and drama weaves together saintly legends, tragic sieges, and local folklore across East Lothian, capturing a landscape deeply haunted by its violent past and miraculous traditions.
Wagner as Man & Artist
Ernest Newman
Behind the sweeping scale of monumental music lies a deeply flawed human being whose massive egoism, personal chaos, and relentless ambition paradoxically fueled one of history’s most astonishing artistic revolutions.
The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922
Various
A sweeping archival journey through three centuries, this collection restores African American statesmanship, early community building, and international struggles for freedom to their rightful place in human history.
The Mysteries of Free Masonry: Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge
William Morgan
A meticulously detailed transcript of secret rites exposes the hidden architecture, oaths, and symbolic machinery of nineteenth-century American fraternal lodges.
An English Grammar
William Malone Baskervill
A thoughtful grammar bridges the gap between scholarly theory and real-world reading. By replacing rigid dogma with living literary examples, this classic text reveals how English is actually constructed, read, and understood.
Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4
Thomas Jefferson
An elder statesman reflects on the birth of a republic, offering intimate views on power, statecraft, freedom, and the frailties of men. Through personal letters and private notes, a political vision of America unfolds.
Norman Ten Hundred
A. Stanley (Arthur Stanley) Blicq
A small island sends its sons to war, and an eyewitness records the exact cost of their devotion.
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
An unpretentious boyhood in Shropshire quietly unfolds into a globe-spanning journey, yielding a revolutionary understanding of the living world and a deeply reflective life of study.
Poisons, Their Effects and Detection: A Manual for the Use of Analytical Chemists and Experts
Alexander Wynter Blyth
Behind the sterile title of a Victorian chemical manual lies a sweeping, meticulous, and often harrowing map of the ways toxic substances interact with human life, law, and history.
The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln: A Narrative And Descriptive Biography With Pen-Pictures And Personal
Francis F. (Francis Fisher) Browne
A rustic childhood spent scrawling on cabin floors gives way to the heaviest burdens of statecraft in this sprawling, affectionate portrait of a national icon.
The Ship of Fools, Volume 1
Sebastian Brant
A satire on human weakness gathers a crowd of eccentrics onto a single ship bound for ruin.
The Swiss Family Robinson
Johann David Wyss
A shipwrecked Swiss family transforms a wild, uncharted island into a thriving homestead through endless ingenuity, shared labor, and unwavering faith.