The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 128
6,138 public-domain books, summarised. Page 128 of 128.
Seneca myths and folk tales
Arthur C. (Arthur Caswell) Parker
Rooted in Cattaraugus hearths and sacred groves, this collection weaves Seneca cosmology, monstrous encounters, and lived ceremonial traditions into a living tapestry of Haudenosaunee lore.
The Kingdom of God is Within You
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
A radical call to reject state violence and commercialized culture, this text insists that true Christian ethics and authentic art must both serve the moral unification of humanity.
The Life of David Belasco
William Winter
A titan of the American stage wages a fierce war for artistic control while engineering breathtaking, larger-than-life theatrical spectacles.
The Odd Women
George Gissing
To be a woman without private means in late-Victorian England is to stand upon a narrow ledge, where a single misstep or sudden bereavement precipitates a swift slide into poverty.
The Virginia Housewife
Mary Randolph
Domestic order depends on absolute precision, clear method, and systematic governance.
Wild Flowers Worth Knowing
Neltje Blanchan
A plant is never merely a pretty face; it is a relentless, clever enterprise bent on survival, cross-pollination, and colonizing the earth.
Bibliomania
Thomas Frognall Dibdin
A lively, eccentric investigation into the obsession with rare books, written as a multi-day conversation among passionate readers who analyze the symptoms, history, and tragic excesses of literary devotion.
Elizabethan England: From 'A Description of England,' by William Harrison
William Harrison
A quiet country parson leaves his library behind to build a sprawling, vibrant portrait of sixteenth-century English life from the ground up.
Queen Victoria
Lytton Strachey
A young princess, sheltered amid fierce family rivalries, rises to command the premier empire of the modern world with an iron, unyielding will.
The free man's library
Henry Hazlitt
A curated map of freedom’s intellectual history offers a vital shield against state overreach and the silent erosion of personal liberty.
The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan, 1856-7-8
George Dodd
In the mid-nineteenth century, an explosion of military mutiny threatens to shatter a global empire. A sweeping narrative traces the chaotic violence, the desperate sieges, and the political upheaval that ultimately rewrote the destiny of the Indian subcontinent.
The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven, Volume II
Alexander Wheelock Thayer
A fiercely dedicated artist turns private torment into public mastery while battling the absurdities of patronage, theatre politics, and his own unraveling life.
The Science of Fingerprints: Classification and Uses
United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation
A definitive guide to friction ridges and classification systems, this manual transforms the microscopic curves of human fingertips into a rigid, universally applicable science of personal identity.
Tom Sawyer, Detective
Mark Twain
A spring-fever trip down the Mississippi entangles Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer in a dark web of diamond thefts, mistaken identities, and a small-town murder trial.
American honey plants
Frank C. (Frank Chapman) Pellett
Across North America’s meadows, swamps, and forests, the survival of honeybee colonies and the yield of sweet surplus rest on a vast, intricate carpet of nectar-bearing flora.
Auguste Rodin
Rainer Maria Rilke
He who models life must begin in solitude, finding in the patient surfaces of stone and bronze a universe that breathes.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "English History": Volume 9, Slice 5
Various
Centuries of faction, conquest, and parliamentary maneuver reveal a nation continuously reshaping its crown to preserve its domestic peace.
The Complete Angler 1653
Izaak Walton
A celebration of quietude and the natural world, this foundational text transforms the technical pursuit of fishing into a meditative philosophy of contentment, patience, and simple living.
The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part C.: From Henry VII. to Mary
David Hume
A monarch’s authority rests not on abstract rights, but on the cold mechanics of power, money, and religious control.
The Magician's Own Book, or, the Whole Art of Conjuring: Being a complete hand-book of parlor magic, and containing over one thousand optical, chemical, mechanical, magnetical, and magical experiments, amusing transmutations, astonishing sleights and subtleties, celebrated card deceptions, ingenious tricks with numbers, curious and entertaining puzzles, together with all the most noted tricks of modern performers
George Arnold
A secret spring releases a trapdoor, a hidden elastic cord snatches a coin up a sleeve, and chemical affinities turn clear liquids into shimmering crystals within the quiet sanctuary of the home.
The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa: Seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1885-1886, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1891, pages 143-300
Walter James Hoffman
Deep in the pine forests of the Upper Midwest, sacred birch-bark scrolls record an ancient path of healing, spiritual power, and survival against cultural erasure.
Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17): Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales
Various
A magic-hunted prince with an oversized nose, a bear sleeping beside a winter hearth, and a bird whose song bound four swans across centuries fill this expansive realm of myth, fable, and childhood wonder.
Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of William Butler Yeats
W. B. (William Butler) Yeats
A comprehensive roadmap through decades of Irish myth, mystic philosophy, tragic drama, and delicate lyric poetry offers an exhaustive inventory of a monumental literary career.
Love: A Treatise on the Science of Sex-attraction: for the use of Physicians and Students of Medical Jurisprudence
Bernard Simon Talmey
Grounded in biological anatomy and clinical observations, this medical treatise seeks to dismantle the Victorian double standard of morality by demonstrating that the fundamental sexual impulse is identical in both men and women.
Tales of Passed Times
Charles Perrault
In a landscape governed by clever cats, enchanted spindles, monster suitors, and subterranean crystal towers, survival demands both sharp wits and unyielding devotion. Moral trial and sudden fortune shape every turn of destiny.
The Acharnians
Aristophanes
A tired farmer strikes a private peace treaty with the enemy, turning his personal estate into an island of feast and pleasure while his city burns.
U.S. Copyright Renewals, 1974 January - June
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
An exhaustive administrative registry of mid-century intellectual property, capturing the quiet machinery of American commercial and literary culture.
A History of Matrimonial Institutions, Vol. 3 of 3
George Elliott Howard
Marriage is not an unchanging decree of nature, but a shifting human institution forged through millennia of legal, religious, and economic compromise.
Highways and Byways in the Border: Illustrated
Andrew Lang
Rolling across heather-clad hills and troubled riverbanks, this travelogue traverses the Scottish Border, tracing ancient defensive earthworks, blood-soaked feudal skirmishes, and the enduring echoes of ancient song across a changing landscape.
History for ready reference, Volume 2, El Dorado to Greaves
J. N. (Josephus Nelson) Larned
A sweeping architectural survey of human history weaves thousands of primary accounts into a unified canvas, detailing how law, warfare, and ambition reshaped nations from medieval feudalism to nineteenth-century empires.
Number two Joy Street
Unknown
A woodland clearing holds quiet magical beings that vanish into thin air, leaving behind only the rustle of wind through fern-tossed leaves.
The Haunted Hotel: A Mystery of Modern Venice
Wilkie Collins
A sinister Countess, a vanished courier, and a grand Venetian palace converted into a luxury hotel converge in a tale of murder, unnatural presences, and inescapable guilt.
The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders
Scott, Ernest, Sir
A dedicated naval officer braves violent storms, uncharted seas, and shipwreck to map an unexplored continent, only to find his greatest trial waiting in an enemy governor's prison cell.
The Nürnberg Stove
Ouida
A poor Tyrolese boy clings so fiercely to his family’s antique majolica stove that he hides within its hollow body when it is sold, riding it blindly across frozen Germany into the presence of the king.
American Men of Mind
Burton Egbert Stevenson
A nation's true foundation rests not merely on soldiers and presidents, but on the creative thinkers, scientists, and innovators who forge its cultural and practical life.
Hand-Book of Practical Cookery, for Ladies and Professional Cooks: Containing the Whole Science and Art of Preparing Human Food
Pierre Blot
Gastronomy elevates the simple act of eating into a refined discipline of mind and physique, matching scientific precision with kitchen practice.
Quentin Durward
Walter Scott
A penniless young Scottish archer enters the lethal chessboard of fifteenth-century European politics, where chivalric honor collides directly with cold royal deceit.
Tattine
Ruth Ogden
A seven-year-old girl’s idyllic summer turns bittersweet as she discovers that even her devoted mother cannot shield her from the disturbing, untamed realities of the natural world.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
A trapped wife slips into a feather suit and vanishes into the sky, leaving her mortal husband to wander the earth's end in search of her.
The Declaration of Independence of The United States of America
Thomas Jefferson
A single foundational document reframes political obedience, asserting that a people possess the natural right to sever ties with a monarch when their liberties are systematically destroyed.
The Prairie
James Fenimore Cooper
An aging frontiersman flees the advance of eastern civilization, seeking final solace across the Mississippi only to find the vast prairies brimming with rival tribes, desperate squatters, and lawless conflict.
The Smoky God
Willis George Emerson
A dying Norse sailor reveals the terrifying polar voyage that carried him into a hollow world beneath our own, where giant men live for centuries under a glowing subterranean sun.