Free summaries
History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750) — page 2
180 public-domain history - early modern (c. 1450-1750) books, summarised. Page 2 of 4.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666: Giving some Accompt of the present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in many considerable parts of the World
Various
A dispatch from the dawn of modern science, this work captures a restless network of thinkers observing comets, dissecting monstrous births, measuring ocean tides, and building the tools to see a new world.
The Age of the Reformation
Preserved Smith
A vast religious, political, and social upheaval reshapes Western Europe, breaking the medieval spiritual monopoly and laying the institutional foundations of the modern world.
A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 4
François Guizot
A central contradiction haunts the story of sixteenth-century France: no nation matches her brilliance in war, intellect, and social charm, yet few have proven so prone to squander these gifts through reckless division and royal caprice.
Concerning Christian Liberty
Martin Luther
The soul requires only the word of God for life and salvation, yet true liberty expresses itself through loving service to one's neighbor. This defining work of the Reformation balances spiritual autonomy with earthly duty.
A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 2: Modern Philosophy
Herbert Ernest Cushman
Modern philosophy traces a winding, ambitious path from the mechanical precision of the seventeenth century to the sweeping, unified idealism of the nineteenth. Through a series of rigorous intellectual investigations, it seeks to map the boundaries of human knowledge and the nature of reality itself.
Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, Volume 1 (of 3): Illustrating the Arms, Arts, and Literature of Italy, from 1440 To 1630
James Dennistoun
The history of the Dukes of Urbino offers a window into the golden age of the Italian Renaissance, where the lines between political survival, military mercenary service, and the cultivation of art and literature were inextricably blurred.
Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, from the mss. of Fray Antonio Agapida
Washington Irving
The fall of the last Moorish stronghold in Spain is chronicled here as a sweeping, romantic epic of clashing civilizations, shifting allegiances, and the relentless march of history toward a unified kingdom.
The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China and the Situation Thereof, Volume 1 (of 2)
Juan González de Mendoza
The vast, orderly, and inscrutable landscape of China appears through the eyes of sixteenth-century travelers, painting a portrait of a civilization that feels both impossibly alien and strikingly familiar to the European mind.
A Short History of Italy (476-1900)
Henry Dwight Sedgwick
This sweeping narrative traces the complex evolution of the Italian peninsula, from the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West to the dawn of the twentieth century. It offers a clear, structured guide through the centuries of fragmentation, cultural triumph, and political rebirth that define the Italian experience.
The Master of Game: The Oldest English Book on Hunting
of Norwich Edward
This foundational guide defines the art and ethics of medieval venery, preserving a vanished world where hunting was the supreme test of a gentleman's skill, patience, and character.
![Cover of A Theological-Political Treatise [Part IV]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/a-theological-political-treatise-part-iv-benedictus-de-spinoza.webp)
A Theological-Political Treatise [Part IV]
Benedictus de Spinoza
Human liberty is not a threat to the state, but the very foundation upon which a stable, rational, and peaceful society must be built.
The Wars of Religion in France 1559-1576: The Huguenots, Catherine de Medici and Philip II
James Westfall Thompson
Sixteenth-century France fractures along lines of faith, ambition, and state finance, collapsing into civil war as noble dynasties and foreign powers fight for the mind of a young kingdom.
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803
Unknown
This collection of historical documents chronicles the arduous Spanish efforts to establish a foothold in the Philippine Islands, revealing the harsh realities of sixteenth-century maritime expansion and colonial ambition.
Ethics
Benedictus de Spinoza
Existence is a single, infinite, and necessary substance, and understanding our place within this absolute reality is the path to true freedom.
Paradisi in sole paradisus terrestris, or, A garden of all sorts of pleasant flowers which our English ayre will permitt to be noursed vp: a kitchen garden of all manner of herbes, rootes & fruites for meate or sauce vsed with vs, and, an orchard of all sorte of fruitbearing trees and shrubbes fit for our land, together with the right orderinge, planting & preseruing of them and their vses & vertues
John Parkinson
An English garden designed in the early seventeenth century is an earthly copy of Paradise, a deliberate gathering of God’s creations brought together under variable skies to delight the senses and sustain the household.
The complete servant: Being a practical guide to the peculiar duties and business of all descriptions of servants, from the housekeeper to the servant of all-work, and from the land steward to the foot-boy. With useful receipts and tables
Adams, Samuel, servant
An exhaustive 1825 manual of domestic economy written by two retired servants, offering a remarkably detailed blueprint for managing every post in a Georgian household.
History of Egypt From 330 B.C. To the Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12)
A. S. (Angelo Solomon) Rappoport
From the medieval Crusades and Napoleonic ambitions to the modern unraveling of the Nile's mysteries, Egypt’s past forms an unbroken chain of struggle, transformation, and discovery.
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12
Unknown
Across fifty volatile years, absolute monarchs, religious refugees, and calculating strategists remake the map of Europe and the boundaries of the known world.
Paris, From the Earliest Period to the Present Day
William Walton
A ancient city balances its vast, unruly growth with an ever-evolving web of laws, officials, and institutions. Through centuries of administrative chaos and civic reform, Paris shapes the mechanisms that govern its daily life.
Bohemia, from the earliest times to the fall of national independence in 1620: With a short summary of later events
C. Edmund (Charles Edmund) Maurice
This history of a central European kingdom tracks the long, turbulent struggle for sovereignty, religious reform, and the preservation of a distinct cultural identity. It captures the rise of a nation through its internal conflicts and its eventual, permanent subjugation by the Hapsburgs.
The Rights of War and Peace
Hugo Grotius
The fundamental question of whether war can ever be just, and how it must be conducted if it is, defines this essential inquiry into the moral boundaries of state violence.
The Battle of Blenheim
Hilaire Belloc
The Duke of Marlborough’s brilliant, high-stakes march across Europe culminates in one of the most decisive tactical struggles of the eighteenth century. This account examines the mechanics of war through the lens of a singular, transformative triumph.
Historic Inventions
Rupert Sargent Holland
Human ingenuity acts as the primary architect of modern progress, with history’s most significant leaps forward often arriving through the persistent, iterative work of a single, focused mind.
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898
Unknown
This expansive collection of primary sources documents the complex administrative, religious, and mercantile history of the Philippine Islands under Spanish rule. It offers a rare, granular look at the mechanics of colonial governance from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance: A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism
Donald Lemen Clark
The Renaissance was not merely a rebirth of art; it was a complex collision between the newfound precision of classical rhetoric and the deeply entrenched, inherited traditions of the medieval mind.
The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 13
Unknown
The eighteenth century unfolds as a turbulent, transformative era where the seeds of modern industry, global conflict, and democratic revolution take root amidst the fading embers of absolute monarchy.
The True History of the State Prisoner, commonly called the Iron Mask: Extracted from Documents in the French Archives
Dover, George Agar Ellis, Baron
A minister’s betrayal, a king’s quiet fury, and decades of hidden imprisonment dissolve one of history’s most romanticized legends into the plain reality of political revenge.
Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino, Volume 2 (of 3): Illustrating the Arms, Arts, and Literature of Italy, from 1440 To 1630
James Dennistoun
The history of the Dukes of Urbino reveals the intricate dance between Renaissance artistic splendor and the brutal, shifting tides of Italian power. Through the lens of a scholarly nineteenth-century eye, the narrative reconstructs a world where the sword and the quill were equally essential tools of survival for…
France and England in North America, Part IV: The Old Régime In Canada
Francis Parkman
A despotic crown and a militant church reach across the ocean to build an absolutist kingdom in the wilderness, only to see their rigid hierarchy collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.
The Code of Honor
John Lyde Wilson
A cool-headed handbook for an inherently bloody custom, this nineteenth-century manual outlines strict protocols designed to prevent unnecessary violence, enforce social equality, and govern gentlemen when personal disputes demand an appeal to arms.
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898
Unknown
A fleet sails against Dutch privateers while a fire destroys the wealth of Manila, revealing the fragile networks of trade and faith that bind an empire.
Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air
Joseph Priestley
Air is not a simple, static element, but a complex family of distinct fluids waiting to be isolated, measured, and understood.
Privateers and Privateering
Edward Phillips Statham
HOOK This collection of maritime accounts chronicles the daring, often brutal, lives of independent sea captains who turned state-sanctioned piracy into a profession.
The Anglo-French Entente in the Seventeenth Century
Charles Bastide
The seventeenth century serves as a vital bridge between nations, where the exchange of ideas and the movement of people define a complex, evolving relationship. This inquiry traces how France and England shifted from mutual suspicion to a profound cross-pollination of thought, language, and political philosophy.
The Man of Destiny
Bernard Shaw
A young general meets his match in a mysterious woman who navigates the danger of war with a wit that disarms even the most ambitious man in Europe.
Salve Venetia, gleanings from Venetian history
F. Marion (Francis Marion) Crawford
This is a sweeping, elegiac exploration of the Venetian Republic’s long decline, tracing the city’s transformation from a Mediterranean powerhouse into a stage for decadence and eventual collapse. It reads as both a love letter to a vanishing world and a sharp-eyed autopsy of its political and social disintegration.
![Cover of A Theological-Political Treatise [Part III]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/a-theological-political-treatise-part-iii-benedictus-de-spinoza.webp)
A Theological-Political Treatise [Part III]
Benedictus de Spinoza
Reason and faith occupy separate realms, each possessing a distinct sovereignty that must be respected to ensure both intellectual freedom and social harmony. This inquiry reclaims the boundary between the two, arguing that piety requires only obedience, not speculative dogma.
Pirates
Johnson, Charles, active 1724-1731
These accounts strip away the romantic veneer of the high seas, exposing the grim, often brutal reality of men who chose a life of violence and certain death. Through a series of stark biographies, the reader encounters a world where the line between privateer and criminal was often drawn in blood and salt water.
The Discovery and Conquest of the Molucco and Philippine Islands.: Containing their History, Ancient and Modern, Natural and Political: Their Description, Product, Religion, Government, Laws, Languages, Customs, Manners, Habits, Shape, and Inclinations of the Natives. With an Account of many other adjacent Islands, and several remarkable Voyages through the Streights of Magellan, and in other Parts
Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola
The history of the Moluccas and the Philippines unfolds as a sprawling, volatile chronicle of colonial ambition, where shifting allegiances and the clash of empires define the fate of distant island kingdoms.
The Origins of Contemporary France, Complete Table of Contents
Hippolyte Taine
This massive, multi-volume examination traces the collapse of traditional French society and the subsequent rise of a centralized, authoritarian state born from the wreckage of the 1789 Revolution.
Books and their makers during the Middle Ages
George Haven Putnam
This historical study traces the evolution of the book from the fall of Rome through the seventeenth century, examining the rise of printing, the development of publishing, and the persistent struggle for intellectual liberty.
Dante and the early astronomers
M. A. (Mary Acworth) Orr
Before modern observatories shattered the ancient skies, human beings measured time by shadow poles and mapped their cosmos in fixed nested spheres. To understand how Dante Alighieri wove this early cosmos into poetry, an astronomer turns her gaze back to the origins of stargazing.
A New Light of Alchymie: Taken out of the Fountaine of Nature, and Manuall Experience. Etc
Michal Sedziwój
A central document of early modern science, this work unveils nature’s hidden machinery, guiding readers through the subterranean generation of metals, the spiritual chemistry of the elements, and the elusive art of transmutation.
Early French Prisons: Le Grand and Le Petit Châtelets
Arthur Griffiths
A stark chronicle of French penal history, this account maps the evolution of state power through the shifting, often lethal, walls of its most notorious dungeons.
An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition
Adam Ferguson
The human character is a social creation; without the company and challenges of our fellow creatures, the individual withers like a plant torn from its roots.
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 06: Renaissance and Reformation
John Lord
This series of historical portraits examines the titans of the Renaissance and Reformation, exploring how the shift from medieval tradition to modern inquiry fundamentally reshaped the Western soul and the structure of society.
History of the Conquest of Mexico
William Hickling Prescott
A relentless pursuit of empire drives a small band of Spanish adventurers to dismantle the vast, sophisticated Aztec monarchy. This chronicle captures the collision of two worlds through military precision, diplomatic intrigue, and the tragic collapse of an ancient civilization.
Books and their makers during the Middle Ages
George Haven Putnam
The hand-copied manuscript and the printed page shaped the preserve of human thought across thirteen centuries of European history.