The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 94
30,104 public-domain books, summarised. Page 94 of 628.
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern
Unknown
This expansive collection gathers the voices of poets, historians, and storytellers from across history, serving as a vast, curated gallery of global literary achievement. It is a bridge between the reader and the foundational texts that have shaped human expression.
Life in Hawaii
Titus Coan
HOOK A devoted missionary recounts his decades of labor among the people of Hawaii and the Marquesas Islands, set against a backdrop of dramatic volcanic eruptions and sweeping cultural change.
Mountain Interval
Robert Frost
The choices we make in a quiet, indifferent world define us, yet often remain beyond our comprehension. This collection explores the tension between human connection and the isolation of the New England landscape.
The domestication of Dobie
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
A drifting cowboy finds himself tangled in a chaotic series of misfortunes after his impulsive marriage, documenting his slide from a romantic drifter to a reluctant, sheep-herding husband.
The green overcoat
Hilaire Belloc
A stolen coat and a misplaced identity launch a timid academic into a chaotic, farcical nightmare of crime, class struggle, and accidental celebrity.
The science of fairy tales
Edwin Sidney Hartland
A foundational work of nineteenth-century folklore, this investigation explores the hidden connections between fairy legends and the primitive social structures from which they emerged. It treats myth not as mere fancy, but as a living record of human evolution.
The Story of Switzerland
Richard Stead
A rugged, alpine chronicle of a nation forged from diverse tribes, feudal scraps, and an enduring, stubborn commitment to communal independence.
The Tin Woodman of Oz: A Faithful Story of the Astonishing Adventure Undertaken
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
An unlikely trio sets out on a quest to reunite a legendary hero with a long-lost love, only to discover that the heart’s deepest desires are often more complicated than a fairy tale suggests.
A Harmony of the Gospels for Students of the Life of Christ: Based on the Broadus Harmony in the Revised Version
A. T. Robertson
The life of Christ unfolds through a precise, comparative arrangement of the four Gospels, inviting readers to examine the narrative flow and historical development of the ministry of Jesus.
Diary of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
A clerk’s secret, sprawling record of daily life in Restoration London, capturing the intimacy of a marriage and the pulse of a city defined by intrigue, fire, and the shifting whims of a king.
Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft
Walter Scott
Superstition is a contagion of the mind, often flourishing more in the hearts of the fearful than in the presence of any genuine spirit. These letters trace the dark history of humanity’s obsession with the invisible.
Criminal Man, According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso
Gina Lombroso
This volume offers a concise distillation of a controversial, foundational theory in criminology, detailing how biological traits were once believed to dictate criminal behavior. It provides a window into the nineteenth-century effort to pathologize the impulse to break the law.
Elements of Military Art and Science
H. W. (Henry Wager) Halleck
Strategic victory is not the product of impulse, but the result of deliberate, scientific calculation that governs every movement from the march to the final assault.
Peter Pan
J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie
A boy who refuses to grow up spirits three children away to a magical island, where they navigate the perils of pirates, mermaids, and their own shifting identities.
The tale of Grandfather Mole
Arthur Scott Bailey
A grumpy, subterranean eccentric finds his quiet, worm-filled life in a garden repeatedly interrupted by meddling neighbors and their demands.
War Letters of a Public-School Boy
Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
This collection of letters and biographical sketches captures the earnest, high-minded spirit of a young British officer who balanced a deep love for classical culture with the harsh realities of the Great War.
Buried Cities: Pompeii, Olympia, Mycenae (Complete)
Jennie Hall
Digging into the earth can reveal more than just dirt; it can uncover the heartbeat of civilizations long thought lost to history. This collection explores the remnants of three ancient worlds, bringing their daily lives, tragedies, and enduring mysteries back into the light.
Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest, with a Few Observations
J. Frank (James Frank) Dobie
This guide serves as a map through the literature of the American Southwest, reclaiming the region’s distinct cultural identity from the shadows of colonial New England imports. It functions as both a curated bibliography and a personal, intellectual manifesto on living intelligently within one's own home soil.
The Dance of Life
Havelock Ellis
The world is not a machine to be measured, but a performance to be lived. This inquiry reclaims the act of existence as an unfolding aesthetic experience, where life itself is the primary art.
A Selection from the Writings of Guy De Maupassant, Vol. I
Guy de Maupassant
This collection gathers the sharp, unforgiving observations of a master of the short form. These stories capture the quiet cruelties, fleeting joys, and deep-seated madness lurking beneath the surface of nineteenth-century French life.
Korean Fairy Tales
William Elliot Griffis
This collection offers a window into the folklore and ancient spirit of Korea, presenting a tapestry of legends, animal fables, and moral parables that shaped the cultural imagination of the Land of Morning Splendor.
Paradise Regained
John Milton
The epic poem follows the spiritual struggle of Jesus as he confronts the Adversary in the wilderness, choosing divine obedience over the seductive promises of earthly power and worldly wisdom.
The Golden Treasury: Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language
Unknown
This expansive collection gathers the finest lyrical voices of three centuries into a single, enduring vessel of English verse. It serves as a lifelong companion for those seeking beauty, solace, and the music of the human heart.
The Praise of Folly
Desiderius Erasmus
HOOK A satirical goddess ascends the podium to explain why the world’s most successful, happy, and influential people are, by necessity, fools.
Egoists, A Book of Supermen: Stendhal, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Anatole France, Huysmans, Barrès, Nietzsche, Blake, Ibsen, Stirner, and Ernest Hello
James Huneker
This collection of critical essays serves as a rigorous, unsentimental map of the nineteenth century’s most defiant and individualistic minds. It explores the tension between the singular creator and the stifling herd.
McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book
Alexander H. (Alexander Hamilton) McGuffey
Mastering the English language begins with the fundamental building blocks of sound and structure. This foundational guide transforms the daunting task of literacy into a systematic journey from simple phonetics to complex, nuanced vocabulary.
This Simian World
Clarence Day
A whimsical, sharp-witted meditation, this work explores what history might have looked like if humanity had descended from cats, ants, or elephants rather than monkeys.
Selections from Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
This collection offers an essential encounter with the haunting melodies and chilling architectural precision of a master of the macabre and the analytical. It serves as a comprehensive introduction to the foundational voice of American Gothic and detective fiction.
A Prose English Translation of Vishnupuranam: (Based on Professor H. H. Wilson's translation.)
H. H. (Horace Hayman) Wilson
The divine majesty of Vishnu breathes through this ancient tapestry of creation, dissolution, and the rhythmic return of the soul to its source. It serves as a foundational bridge between the cosmic infinite and the human search for righteousness.
A Study of the Bhâgavata Purâna
Unknown
The Bhâgavata Purâna reveals the cosmos not as a random collection of events, but as a deliberate, unfolding drama of spirit descending into matter and seeking its way home again.
Fate and a fool
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
Fate and a fool are often the only things standing between a town and its own destruction. In this raucous tale, a mysterious, disheveled shepherd and a legendary local vagabond prove that the most unlikely characters are those who truly shape the course of history.
Inventions in the century
William H. (William Henry) Doolittle
This chronicle traces the relentless ingenuity of the nineteenth century, cataloging how human persistence and mechanical curiosity transformed the raw materials of the earth into the foundations of the modern industrial world.
My Life as an Author
Martin Farquhar Tupper
A man of letters looks back upon a life defined by immense popularity, steady industry, and an unshakeable belief in his own moral purpose.
Papers on Health
John Kirk
A comprehensive manual of home-based hydrotherapy and hygiene, this text distills decades of practical medical advice into an accessible, alphabetical guide for the household. It stands as a curious monument to late-Victorian domestic self-reliance.
The First Men in the Moon
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
Two men of wildly different temperaments journey to the lunar surface in a sphere of their own invention, discovering a subterranean world that defies every earthly expectation. This classic of early science fiction remains a masterwork of imaginative world-building, blending the wonder of space travel with a…
The Game of Logic
Lewis Carroll
This book transforms the study of logic from an abstract, academic pursuit into a tangible, playful puzzle. By utilizing a physical board and colored counters, it invites readers to map out arguments visually, turning statements about "cakes" and "dragons" into a game of spatial reasoning.
The Story of the Sun: New York, 1833-1918
Frank Michael O'Brien
This history chronicles the rise of the New York Sun, from its 1833 debut as a radical penny paper to its transformation into a pillar of American journalism by the early twentieth century.
The Romance of Names
Ernest Weekley
The hidden history of our identities lies in the common words we carry. This study turns the dry catalogs of surnames into a vibrant, living record of medieval life and human ingenuity.
Thirteen Years of a Busy Woman's Life
Mrs. (Ethel) Alec-Tweedie
A restless traveler and industrious chronicler recounts the transformative decades of her life, navigating the challenges of widowhood by forging a prolific career in journalism and travel writing across the turn of the century.
White Jacket
Herman Melville
A sailor’s journey from the Pacific to the American coast serves as a harrowing, lyrical microcosm of life under the crushing weight of naval authority. This exploration of the nineteenth-century man-of-war endures as a profound critique of institutional cruelty and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
Analyzing Character: The New Science of Judging Men
Katherine M. H. (Katherine Melvina Huntsinger) Blackford
Success in life, according to this early twentieth-century manual, is not a matter of luck but of alignment—fitting the right person into the right vocation based on their innate physical and psychological traits.
Brief History of English and American Literature
Henry A. (Henry Augustin) Beers
This survey offers a panoramic view of the English literary tradition and its transatlantic evolution, mapping the development of language and thought from early chronicles to the late nineteenth century.
Tales of the Jazz Age
F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald
These stories capture the frantic, shimmering threshold of the Jazz Age, where youthful ambition and reckless desire collide with the cold, unyielding structures of American society.
The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth
J. B. (John Bagnell) Bury
The modern belief that humanity is perpetually improving is a relatively recent invention, not an eternal truth. This history examines how that optimistic conviction displaced older religious worldviews to become the guiding star of Western civilization.
United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches: From Washington to George W. Bush
United States. Presidents
These inaugural addresses capture the evolving voice of a nation, tracing its journey from the tentative hopes of a new republic to the global responsibilities of a modern superpower.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table
Oliver Wendell Holmes
A series of witty, philosophical breakfast-table monologues, this work captures the essence of a nineteenth-century intellectual mind ruminating on everything from the nature of genius to the beauty of a well-baked pie.
Atalanta
Charles Napier Richards
This Victorian-era scientific romance follows a group of British academics and their loyal assistant as they trade the hallowed halls of Cambridge for the unknown mysteries of the planet Venus.
Nobody's boy (Sans famille)
Hector Malot
A young boy wanders across 19th-century France with a traveling troupe of performing animals, searching for the truth about his origins and the meaning of home.