Free summaries
History - Modern (1750+) — page 2
287 public-domain history - modern (1750+) books, summarised. Page 2 of 6.

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 52, 1841-1898: Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
Unknown
This compilation of primary documents chronicles the final, turbulent decades of Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines, documenting the collision between an aging imperial administration and the rising tide of local reform.

A Handbook of Modern Japan
Ernest W. (Ernest Wilson) Clement
A panoramic survey of a nation in rapid transition, this work captures the spirit of early twentieth-century Japan as it pivots from feudal isolation toward a modern, globalized future.

Anarchism
Paul Eltzbacher
This systematic study offers a rigorous, neutral map of anarchist thought by analyzing the core principles of its most influential thinkers. It serves as a definitive primer for those seeking to understand the movement beyond common misconceptions.

Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 3.: The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century
Jules Verne
The nineteenth century represents a breathless era of global mapping, where the final blank spots on the world’s atlas vanish under the persistent scrutiny of explorers. This exhaustive chronicle captures the sheer scale of that ambition, documenting the mapping of continents, the navigation of treacherous polar…

The West Riding Territorials in the Great War
Laurie Magnus
A detailed record of civilian preparation, front-line sacrifice, and tactical movement transforms local territorial units into the backbone of Great Britain’s continental war effort.

The history of the psychoanalytic movement
Sigmund Freud
When a revolutionary intellectual movement faces fierce public hostility and internal rebellion, its creator takes up the pen to defend its true origins, core principles, and boundary lines.

The Flying Saucers are Real
Donald E. (Donald Edward) Keyhoe
Military aviation officers and commercial pilots keep sighting massive, high-speed metallic disks, forcing a former Marine Corps pilot to investigate whether the United States government is covering up visits from extraterrestrial space craft.

The New World of Islam
Lothrop Stoddard
Across the Near and Middle East, a massive religious and political awakening is quietly dismantling centuries of decay and redrawing the global balance of power.

A Voyage to Terra Australis
Matthew Flinders
A relentless sea commander charts thousands of miles of unknown coastline, surviving shipwrecks, treacherous reefs, and years of foreign imprisonment to assemble the first complete map of an entire continent.

Chemical warfare
Amos A. (Amos Alfred) Fries
The battlefield is no longer a place of mere kinetic force; it has become a laboratory where the atmosphere itself is weaponized to disable, distress, and destroy.

Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
Friedrich Engels
The central argument here is that the historical development of society is not a series of accidents, but a process driven by economic forces that inevitably lead toward the collective ownership of production.

Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries
Rufus M. (Rufus Matthew) Jones
The pursuit of a direct, inward connection with the Divine drove a courageous, often persecuted, lineage of thinkers to challenge the rigid dogmas of their age.

A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries: And of the Discovery of Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864
David Livingstone
This narrative documents a landmark Victorian expedition to East Africa, blending geographical discovery with a sobering, firsthand investigation into the human cost of the inland slave trade.

The book of Christmas
Thomas K. Hervey
This immersive chronicle preserves the fading customs, superstitions, and hearty revelries of the traditional English Christmas. It serves as both a nostalgic record and a warm invitation to rediscover the season’s enduring spirit of communal joy.

The History of Creation, Vol. 1 (of 2): Or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes
Ernst Haeckel
This work serves as a foundational defense of evolutionary theory, arguing that all biological forms are products of natural, mechanical laws rather than supernatural design. It remains a landmark text for understanding the mid-19th-century intellectual shift toward a monistic worldview.

In Darkest Africa, Vol. 2
Henry M. (Henry Morton) Stanley
A relentless march through swamp, forest, and mountain reveals how easily human authority unravels when stripped of its familiar borders.

With the Boer Forces
Howard Clemens Hillegas
An eye-opening, eyewitness account of ordinary farm families taking up arms to defend their homeland, offering an intimate and fair-minded chronicle of the Boer ranks during the South African War.

The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 21: The Recent Days (1910-1914)
Unknown
A world on the threshold of seismic transformation attempts to steady itself through quiet legal reforms and grand engineering feats before plunging headlong into global conflict.

Loss of the Steamship "Titanic"
Great Britain. Court to investigate loss of steamship "Titanic"
A rigorous forensic investigation reconstructs the final hours of an unlosable ocean liner with clinical precision, exposing how legal loopholes and human error converted a glancing blow into a historic catastrophe.

Life in a Railway Factory
Alfred Williams
In the roaring heat and deafening clangor of an early twentieth-century locomotive plant, industrial labor is laid bare in all its brutal physical strain, quiet camaraderie, and human vulnerability.

Catastrophe and Social Change: Based Upon a Sociological Study of the Halifax Disaster
Samuel Henry Prince
A city in ruins provides the laboratory for this study of how sudden, violent destruction forces a rigid society to abandon its habits and reorganize under the pressure of crisis.

The History of the 36th (Ulster) Division
Cyril Falls
This account captures the harrowing trajectory of a single division through the crucible of the Great War. It balances the cold precision of military logistics with the visceral, human cost of modern combat.

The Friars in the Philippines
Ambrose Coleman
This work provides a rigorous, contemporary defense of the Spanish religious orders against the political and social upheavals that accompanied the end of the nineteenth century in the Philippines.

South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 3 (of 8): From the Battle of Colenso, 15th Dec. 1899, to Lord Roberts's Advance into the Free State, 12th Feb. 1900
Louis Creswicke
This account chronicles the pivotal mid-winter months of the South African War, capturing the desperation of besieged garrisons and the arrival of a massive, multi-national Imperial relief effort.

The Child in the Midst: A Comparative Study of Child Welfare in Christian and Non-Christian Lands
Mary Schauffler Platt
A sobering portrait of early twentieth-century global childhood, this work advocates for the transformation of non-Western domestic and social life through the introduction of Christian missionary values.

A History of Science
Henry Smith Williams
This narrative traces the rapid evolution of human understanding, moving from early chemical theories to the complex biological and psychological discoveries that defined the nineteenth century. It serves as a comprehensive record of how meticulous experimentation transformed vague natural philosophies into modern…

The Grenadier Guards in the Great War of 1914-1918, Vol. 3 of 3
Frederick Ponsonby
A granular, measured chronicle of British elite infantry fighting through the bitter final year of the Great War, where disciplined military routine meets total industrial carnage.

Journal of a Voyage to Brazil: And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823
Callcott, Maria, Lady
This observant travelogue captures the raw, shifting pulse of a nation in the throes of birth, documenting the daily life and political upheaval of Brazil during its transition to independence. It serves as a candid window into a world where the old colonial order clashes with the fervor of a new, uncertain empire.

Tanks in the Great War, 1914-1918
J. F. C. (John Frederick Charles) Fuller
The tank emerges in this account not merely as a weapon, but as a mechanical revolution that permanently shattered the stalemate of trench warfare. It remains a foundational text for understanding the birth of mechanized combat and the industrialization of the battlefield.

True Stories of the Great War, Volume 6 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
Unknown
These firsthand accounts from the front lines of the Great War capture the grim reality, sudden humor, and profound sacrifices of soldiers, nurses, and civilians caught in the crossfire of a global catastrophe.

The History of the 51st (Highland) Division 1914-1918
F. W. (Frederick William) Bewsher
The 51st (Highland) Division carved a singular reputation in the trenches of the Great War, and this chronicle captures their relentless service from the early battles of 1914 through the final, hard-won advances of 1918.

Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia
Philip Parker King
The vast, untamed coastline of early nineteenth-century Australia unfolds through the eyes of a meticulous navigator mapping unknown waters. This account captures the perilous intersection of imperial ambition, scientific discovery, and the harsh realities of maritime exploration.

The Japan-Russia War: An Illustrated History of the War in the Far East
Sydney Tyler
The dawn of the twentieth century brought a clash of empires that reshaped the global map, marking the first time in modern history an Asian power defeated a European one. This account documents the rise of Japan as a formidable military force on the world stage.

Modern Religious Cults and Movements
Gaius Glenn Atkins
A long-simmering crisis of faith, driven by evolution, psychology, and a desire for bodily healing, birthed a array of new movements outside traditional Christianity that permanently reshaped modern spiritual life.
![Cover of The Bible in Spain, Vol. 1 [of 2]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/the-bible-in-spain-vol-1-of-2-george-borrow.webp)
The Bible in Spain, Vol. 1 [of 2]
George Borrow
A Protestant missionary rides through nineteenth-century Spain with saddlebags full of Testaments, turning an obscure religious mission into an unforgettable, wild travel adventure.

Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday
Henry Charles Lahee
The violin exerts a singular, powerful sway over human emotions, yet the master players who coaxed its melodies often fought cold crowds, treacherous sleigh trips, and grueling tours to earn their place in musical history.

List of post offices in Canada, with the names of the postmasters ... 1873
Canada. Post Office Department
This official directory maps the sprawling reach of Canada’s postal network in 1873, offering a meticulous snapshot of a young nation’s efforts to connect its disparate communities through correspondence.

The Putumayo, the Devil's Paradise: Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians Therein
W. E. (Walter Ernest) Hardenburg
This urgent account documents a harrowing humanitarian catastrophe in the early 20th-century Amazon, exposing the industrial-scale enslavement and systematic slaughter of indigenous people for the global rubber trade.

The gradual acceptance of the Copernican theory of the universe
Dorothy Stimson
The heavens were once viewed as a static, sacred stage, but human curiosity eventually dismantled that crystalline order to reveal a vast, moving universe. This work traces that slow, contentious transition from ancient certainty to modern scientific understanding.

Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War
Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot
This survey explores the rapid, violent transformation of aviation during the early years of the First World War. It provides a technical and tactical overview of how dirigibles and aeroplanes became essential, if unpredictable, instruments of modern combat.

Liberalism
L. T. (Leonard Trelawny) Hobhouse
This foundational work traces the evolution of liberal thought from individualistic self-reliance to a modern, social-minded framework that defines liberty as a collective achievement rather than merely an absence of restraint.

The Three Voyages of Captain Cook Round the World. Vol. VII. Being the Third of the Third Voyage
James King
The final chapter of an era, this chronicle captures the closing of a legendary maritime legacy amidst the unfamiliar and unforgiving landscapes of the North Pacific. It offers a sober, firsthand look at the human cost of discovery.

True Stories of the Great War, Volume 3 (of 6): Tales of Adventure--Heroic Deeds--Exploits Told by the Soldiers, Officers, Nurses, Diplomats, Eye Witnesses
Unknown
A kaleidoscopic collection of firsthand reports, these pages capture the raw, immediate intensity of the First World War through the eyes of those who lived it.

The Story of the Great War, Volume 4: Champagne, Artois, Grodno
Unknown
Guns, mud, and diplomatic strain converge as European armies lock into brutal attrition while distant neutral powers navigate an expanding war.

The Marne Battle-fields (1914)
Unknown
A landscape of ancient beauty becomes the front line of modern total war, leaving a trail of scarred towns, destroyed heritage, and silent fields.

What is Coming? A Forecast of Things after the War
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A mind trained in the habits of scientific analysis looks past the immediate chaos of global conflict to discern the structural shifts rebuilding tomorrow's society.

McGill and its Story, 1821-1921
Cyrus MacMillan
Driven by a visionary bequest, a fragile Canadian college overcomes decades of legal battles, internal discord, and financial ruin to become a premier seat of higher learning.

Notes of a War Correspondent
Richard Harding Davis
A seasoned observer documents the raw, unvarnished reality of global conflict, moving from the quiet tragedy of a lone execution in Cuba to the chaotic, dust-choked front lines of the world’s major wars.