The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 117
6,138 public-domain books, summarised. Page 117 of 128.
The Metal Monster
Abraham Merritt
The boundaries of human knowledge shatter in the high mountains of Tibet, where a hidden civilization of sentient, metallic geometry threatens to reshape the world. This is a journey into an abyss where the inorganic learns to think, and the lightning itself obeys the command of a woman who is both human and…
The Pink Fairy Book
Andrew Lang
These ancient stories span the globe, proving that whether told by campfires or in city huts, human hearts everywhere share the same hunger for justice, kindness, and wonder.
Woman, Church & State: The Original Exposé of Male Collaboration Against the Female Sex
Matilda Joslyn Gage
The history of civilization is a history of the systematic subjugation of women by religious and state powers, a narrative of resilience and profound institutional betrayal.
Above the Snow Line: Mountaineering Sketches Between 1870 and 1880
C. T. (Clinton Thomas) Dent
The high, cold silence of the Alps serves as the backdrop for these reflections, where the pursuit of summits reveals as much about human nature as it does about the mechanics of climbing.
Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7: A series of pen and pencil sketches of the lives of more than 200 of the most prominent personages in History
Unknown
This volume presents a sweeping gallery of literary lives, documenting the struggles, triumphs, and daily habits of history's most influential writers through detailed, respectful biographical sketches.
Hunger
Knut Hamsun
Hunger is a haunting, feverish descent into the mind of a starving man. It captures the terrifying clarity of physical decline and the strange, erratic brilliance that can bloom within a disintegrating consciousness.
Nathaniel Parker Willis
Henry A. (Henry Augustin) Beers
The life of a celebrity writer is often a curious study in contradictions, balancing the ephemeral nature of fame against a genuine, lifelong devotion to the craft of letters.
The Enchanted Castle
E. (Edith) Nesbit
Magic is not always a grand, sweeping affair; sometimes it is a hidden, mischievous force waiting in the quiet corners of an old, neglected estate.
The Haunters & The Haunted: Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural
Unknown
The boundary between the quick and the dead is porous, held together by ancient terrors, lingering guilt, and the relentless pull of the human will. This collection charts that uneasy borderland, where the ordinary world is constantly punctured by the inexplicable.
The Teesdale Angler
R. Lakeland
The dedicated angler’s guide to the streams of Northern England, this manual offers practical wisdom on catching trout through the changing seasons. It serves as a bridge between the nineteenth-century enthusiast and the timeless, meditative craft of the riverbank.
The writing of fiction
Edith Wharton
The art of storytelling is not a haphazard act of inspiration, but a disciplined craft requiring both technical precision and a profound, detached understanding of the human condition.
Turgenev in English: A Checklist of Works by and about Him
Rissa Yachnin
A meticulous guide to the English-language presence of a literary giant, documenting his journey from nineteenth-century curiosity to twentieth-century classic.
A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Georges Perrot
The genius of the Nile, etched in stone and cast in bronze, remains the singular testament of a civilization that viewed art as a timeless bridge between the living and the eternal. This comprehensive survey explores the enduring mechanics and aesthetic philosophy of ancient Egyptian craftsmanship.
Five Stages of Greek Religion
Gilbert Murray
This examination tracks the evolution of Greek belief from primitive ritual to the spiritual anxieties of the Hellenistic world, tracing how human longing shapes the divine.
The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes: His Fortunes & Adversities
Anonymous
The story of a clever, destitute boy navigating a landscape of indifference and deceit, this foundational work of picaresque fiction survives as a cynical, sharp-eyed portrait of survival.
A critical history of Greek philosophy
W. T. (Walter Terence) Stace
Greek philosophy is not a collection of dusty relics, but a living tradition of inquiry. This survey traces the evolution of Western thought from its earliest beginnings to its eventual decline.
The History of Chemistry, Volume 1 (of 2)
Thomas Thomson
This work serves as a foundational survey of chemical development, tracing the path from the mystical pursuits of the alchemists to the systematic, evidence-based practices of the eighteenth-century laboratory.
Vathek
William Beckford
A caliph trades his soul for forbidden knowledge, only to discover that the abyss he sought is a place where ambition ends in eternal, silent regret.
Woodworking Tools 1600-1900
Peter C. Welsh
This history explores the quiet, three-hundred-year evolution of the carpenter’s hand tool, tracing its journey from the medieval workbench to the industrial precision of the nineteenth century. It reveals how modest implements became the quiet engines of modern craftsmanship.
Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters
C. H. W. (Claude Hermann Walter) Johns
Ancient clay tablets reveal the complex legal codes and personal correspondence of a civilization thousands of years old. This scholarly work synthesizes these primary sources to reconstruct the vanished daily life of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires.
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce
This vast index serves as a master key to the collected works of a master satirist, offering a comprehensive map of his fiction, essays, poetry, and biting social commentary. It provides a structured path through the sprawling, cynical, and darkly comedic landscape of a nineteenth-century literary career.
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Henry James
Henry James
This expansive index captures the breadth of a literary life, organizing decades of novels, essays, and personal correspondence into a singular, vast archive. It stands as a comprehensive map of one writer’s obsession with the friction between the New World and the Old.
Standard Selections: A Collection and Adaptation of Superior Productions from Best Authors for Use in Class Room and on the Platform
Unknown
This collection serves as a practical manual for students of oratory, offering a diverse array of poems, historical speeches, and dramatic scenes selected specifically for public performance and vocal training.
The Borgias: Celebrated Crimes
Alexandre Dumas
The rise and fall of the Borgia family serves as a chilling testament to the corruption of the Italian Renaissance, documenting how raw ambition transformed the papacy into a vehicle for bloodshed, nepotism, and absolute power.
A Mother's List of Books for Children
Gertrude Weld Arnold
A curated guide for the early twentieth-century home, this volume offers a selective, age-based bibliography intended to nourish a child’s mind through the best literature of the age.
Early Voyages to Terra Australis, Now Called Australia:: A Collection of Documents, and Extracts from Early Manuscript Maps, Illustrative of the History of Discovery on the Coasts of That Vast Island, from the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century to the Time of Captain Cook
Richard Henry Major
Before the modern maps of the world were fully drawn, a vast "Southern Land" haunted the imaginations and logs of explorers. This collection preserves the fragile, perilous reality of those early attempts to define Australia.
Mankind in the Making
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A vision for the future of the human race, this work proposes a systematic, scientific approach to social engineering. It challenges the reader to prioritize the welfare and potential of the next generation above all existing political traditions.
Manners and Rules of Good Society
Anonymous
Navigating the intricate social corridors of Edwardian Britain requires a map, and this manual provides the essential guide for avoiding the most egregious breaches of good society. It serves as a comprehensive, no-nonsense directory for those who wish to master the nuanced expectations governing everything from…
The Light Princess
George MacDonald
A princess loses her sense of gravity, floating like a cloud through a world she cannot touch, until a persistent prince discovers that only the weight of love can bring her back to earth.
The Naval War of 1812: Or the History of the United States Navy during the Last War with Great Britain to Which Is Appended an Account of the Battle of New Orleans
Theodore Roosevelt
This rigorous account reconstructs the naval combat of the War of 1812, stripping away myth to analyze the tactical precision and hard-won discipline that defined a formative era of American maritime history.
The Worm Ouroboros: A Romance
Eric Rücker Eddison
A saga of unyielding warriors and sorcerous kings, this tale unfolds across mythic landscapes in a struggle where pride and honor outweigh life itself.
Three in Norway, by Two of Them
J. A. (James Arthur) Lees
A lighthearted, self-deprecating chronicle of three British gentlemen navigating the rugged wilderness of the Norwegian interior, this account captures the comical frustrations and occasional triumphs of a Victorian sporting holiday. It remains a charming study of amateurism, endurance, and the enduring bond…
Goethe's literary essays
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A collection of profound observations on the nature of creativity, this volume reveals the mind of a singular thinker as he navigates the history of art and the responsibilities of the critic.
Marriage
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A young couple attempts to reconcile the demands of a conventional, socially competitive marriage with a deeper, shared search for meaning. Their journey leads them from the drawing rooms of England to the profound silence of the Labrador wilderness.
Norway
Sigvart Sörensen
This historical survey charts the long, arduous evolution of the Norwegian nation from its mythic, seafaring origins to its emergence as a sovereign constitutional state. It offers a meticulous record of the political and cultural forces that shaped the North.
The Modern Bicycle and Its Accessories
Alex Schwalbach
This technical survey chronicles the late nineteenth-century bicycle’s rapid evolution, serving as a comprehensive record of the engineering innovations that transformed a novel curiosity into a perfected, accessible machine for the American public.
Thrift
Samuel Smiles
Frugality is not merely the hoarding of coins, but a foundational moral discipline that secures personal independence and strengthens the social fabric. This practical guide argues that the right use of money is inseparable from the virtues of character.
U.S. Copyright Renewals, 1960 July - December
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
This volume offers a meticulous, archival record of intellectual property renewals filed with the United States government, capturing the literary and scholarly landscape of the early 1930s as preserved in 1960.
A history of Italian painting
Frank Jewett Mather
A guide for the curious student, this work chronicles the evolution of Italian painting from the medieval era through the Renaissance, focusing on the masters who redefined the human form and the depiction of space.
Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan
Clement A. Miles
The evolution of a midwinter celebration reveals a fascinating tapestry of ancient folk-belief and religious devotion. This scholarly yet accessible survey traces how disparate pagan customs merged with the Christian festival of the Nativity.
Comets and Meteors: Their phenomena in all ages
Daniel Kirkwood
This survey captures a pivotal moment in nineteenth-century science, when astronomers first realized that the fleeting streaks of light in our night sky are the crumbling remnants of wandering comets.
Further Chronicles of Avonlea
L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery
This collection of stories captures the quiet heart of a turn-of-the-century island community, finding drama in the smallest parlor and the vastest landscape. It offers a window into lives shaped by both rigid duty and secret dreams.
Rousseau and Romanticism
Irving Babbitt
By turning inward to a private world of feeling, modern culture has unmoored itself from the steadying influence of tradition and the humanistic law of measure.
The Andes and the Amazon
James Orton
The journey across the equatorial Andes and down the vast Amazon River reveals a landscape of startling contrasts, where the primeval forest meets the shadow of ancient empires and volcanic peaks. It is a scientific expedition that captures the natural majesty and the human complexities of a continent in transition.
The Ceramic Art: A Compendium of The History and Manufacture of Pottery and Porcelain
Jennie J. Young
The history of civilization is written in clay, a testament to the enduring human impulse to shape the earth into both functional vessel and artistic monument. This comprehensive survey traces that ancient lineage from prehistoric fragments to the burgeoning industrial potteries of the nineteenth century.
The Psychology of the Emotions
Th. (Théodule) Ribot
Deeply rooted in the biological functions of the body, our most complex passions are simply the sophisticated evolution of our simplest physical needs. This rigorous scientific inquiry explores the anatomy of the human heart through the cold lens of late nineteenth-century physiology.
The Wind Among the Reeds
W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
These verses weave the ancient, ghostly echoes of Irish folklore into a delicate tapestry of longing, where the boundaries between the human heart and the shifting wind dissolve.
A Magician Among the Spirits
Harry Houdini
A master of illusion turns his skeptical eye toward the realm of the afterlife, methodically dismantling the claims of mediums and spiritualists through the lens of a professional performer.