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All free summaries — page 146
7,238 public-domain books, summarised. Page 146 of 151.

The History of England, from the Accession of James II
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
When an absolute monarch pushes a deeply Protestant nation past its limit, a high-stakes struggle unfolds over law, faith, and the very foundation of English liberty.

The Sacred Tree
Philpot, J. H., Mrs.
Before temples or text, humanity worshipped the living wood, finding the divine in rustling leaves and ancient trunks. Across centuries and continents, the sacred tree stood as the quiet, enduring foundation of early human faith.

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.

Woman's work in America
Unknown
Women achieve quiet, revolutionary progress whenever they claim entry into fields once denied them.

Women of the Teutonic Nations
Hermann Schoenfeld
Noble figures, tragic heroines, and fierce matriarchs step out from legend into history to reveal how Germanic womanhood shaped the Western world.

A child's guide to reading
John Albert Macy
Cultivating a lifelong passion for reading begins not with simplistic childish tales, but by stepping toward the enduring masters of world literature.

A Set of Six
Joseph Conrad
Six distinct tales explore how human pride and ideology twist ordinary lives under the pressure of historical upheaval and strange fate.

A Text-book of Tanning: A treatise on the conversion of skins into leather, both practical and theoretical
H. R. (Henry Richardson) Procter
A rigorous nineteenth-century manual bridges the gap between industrial craftsmanship and chemical science, explaining how raw animal hides are systematically transformed into durable leather.

An Introduction to Philosophy
George Stuart Fullerton
Philosophical inquiry begins not with grand abstractions, but when standard common-sense assumptions break down under reflective scrutiny.

Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War
Herman Melville
Gathering the dark forebodings of a drifting nation, this poetic chronicle traces the American Civil War from its premonitory shadows to its bloody conflicts and fragile, uncertain peace.

Books and Printing
Unknown
Crafting physical volumes requires balancing structural utility, artistic heritage, and industrial reality. This collection of essays examines how the mechanical, historical, and aesthetic choices of book production shape the way human thought is preserved and read.

Clouds of witness
Dorothy L. (Dorothy Leigh) Sayers
A missing fiance, a murdered captain, and a duke facing trial for his life drive a nobleman detective to untangle a web of secrets across England and France before the wrong man hangs.

History of the Jews in America: From the Period of the Discovery of the New World to the Present Time
Peter Wiernik
Long before modern waves of immigration reshaped the Western Hemisphere, Sephardic landholders, merchant pioneers, and resilient refugees were building vibrant communities across the Americas.

My life on the plains
George A. (George Armstrong) Custer
A high-ranking cavalry officer recounts his campaigns across the American West, delivering a vivid firsthand portrait of military strategy, harsh landscapes, and relentless warfare against Native tribes.

Psychology and Industrial Efficiency
Hugo Münsterberg
Precision and scientific measurement can transform industrial labor into an arena of human fulfillment and heightened productivity.

Special report on diseases of cattle
United States. Bureau of Animal Industry
Practical medical advice for livestock owners balances immediate emergency interventions with long-term herd management to safeguard agricultural vitality.

The Compleat Angler
Izaak Walton
A quiet walk along riverbanks turns into a masterclass on natural history, fishcraft, and the gentle art of living well.

The Ethics of George Eliot's Works
John Crombie Brown
Literature reveals its highest calling when it asks us to love something greater than our own immediate happiness.

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 Learned Lady in England, 1650-1760
Myra Reynolds
A comprehensive history traces how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British women defied societal constraints through rigorous scholarship, artistic creation, literature, and bold intellectual debate.

The Life of James McNeill Whistler
Elizabeth Robins Pennell
A life devoted to uncompromising art meets a world of resistant critics, shifting fortunes, and fierce personal battle.

The Story of Troy
Homer
Across ten years of bitter siege, divine grudges and mortal pride intertw as mythical champions clash on the bloodied plains before a legendary city.

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.

A Wanderer in Paris
E. V. (Edward Verrall) Lucas
An open, observational stroll through Paris reveals a city built equally on grand art, turbulent revolution, and the daily, deliberate pursuit of personal pleasure.

Canada: the Empire of the North: Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom
Agnes C. Laut
A vast wilderness unfolds into a continent-spanning nation as fur traders, forest runners, and beleaguered settlers carve a living from frozen shores, stormy rivers, and blood-soaked battlefields.

McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader
William Holmes McGuffey
A carefully curated anthology opens doors to centuries of world literature, transforming classroom practice into an enduring exercise in elocution, morality, and critical thought.

Other People's Money, and How the Bankers Use It
Louis Dembitz Brandeis
An unchecked concentration of financial power threatens American democracy, not through the personal fortunes of a few wealthy men, but because investment bankers control vast networks of enterprise using the public's accumulated savings.

Some Christmas Stories
Charles Dickens
A quiet room, a glowing hearth, and the sudden realization that time is slipping away between childhood memory and dusty mortality.

The Lone Star Ranger: A Romance of the Border
Zane Grey
A young man in Texas fights the wildness in his own blood and the lawless border that threatens to consume him.

The Scarecrow of Oz
L. Frank (Lyman Frank) Baum
A plunge into an ocean whirlpool sweeps a young girl and an old sailor into a secret, subterranean world of strange beasts and tyrannical kings.

The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry
M. M. Pattison (Matthew Moncrieff Pattison) Muir
A long-standing human drive to comprehend and transform matter shifts slowly from mystical speculation into exact, quantitative natural science.

The World's Best Poetry, Volume 04: The Higher Life
Unknown
A weary heart finds quiet strength in spiritual verse that reaches across centuries to comfort, challenge, and elevate the soul.

Youth
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
A young nobleman steps across the threshold of early manhood, where his high-minded resolutions instantly collide with the petty vanity, social anxiety, and awkward missteps of daily life.

An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent
John Henry Newman
A profound exploration of how the human mind moves from mere mental assent to the unshakeable personal convictions that define a life.

Before Adam
Jack London
A modern man relives the primitive existence of a Pleistocene ancestor through an extraordinary chain of inherited genetic dreams.

Celebrated Travels and Travellers, Part 2.: The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century
Jules Verne
Across unknown oceans and untamed continents, eighteenth-century explorers map the physical realities of the globe while facing fierce seas, unfamiliar cultures, and extreme physical exhaustion.

Edgar Saltus: The Man
Marie Saltus
A hypersensitive man of letters flees the pain of reality through art, esoteric philosophy, and the fierce, protective devotion of his final companion.

History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology
J. F. (John Fletcher) Hurst
Human intellect constantly attempts to dismantle divine revelation, replacing spiritual authority with the fleeting standards of individual reason.

Jack and Jill
Louisa May Alcott
Two young neighbors in a New England village suffer a disastrous sledding accident on a dangerous hill, turning a bright winter afternoon into months of painful confinement, slow recovery, and quiet moral growth.

Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume V, Indiana Narratives
United States. Work Projects Administration
An extraordinary collection of first-person testimonies captures the brutal realities of human bondage, the fragile triumph of emancipation, and the quiet dignity of surviving into old age.

Soliloquies in England, and Later Soliloquies
George Santayana
Solitary reflection turns the casual observations of daily existence into enduring truths of human nature and culture.

The Age of Justinian and Theodora: A History of the Sixth Century A.D., Volume 1 (of 2)
William Gordon Holmes
The sixth century marked a profound crossroads for the Mediterranean world, where the dying embers of classical antiquity collided with the emerging structures of the Middle Ages.

The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
An ancient king's cruelty is stayed night after night by a clever woman, whose sprawling, interwoven tales of magic, trickery, and romance keep execution at bay.

The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.)
Daniel Defoe
Practical trade advice transforms into a razor-sharp survival guide for the early eighteenth-century shopkeeper.

The Lost Girl
D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
A woman's quiet rebellion against the suffocating respectability of an English mining town leads her from nursing wards to a traveling theatrical troupe, and finally to the stark, haunting solitude of the Italian mountains.

The Melting-Pot
Israel Zangwill
In a tiny New York apartment, a young Russian-Jewish violinist dreams that the vast, chaotic tide of world immigration will dissolve ancient hatreds and forge a unified human race.

The Origin and Deeds of the Goths
active 6th century Jordanes
A sweeping sixth-century chronicle traces a proud northern people from their ancestral northern home to their legendary triumphs, bitter divisions, and eventual collapse.

The Path, Vol. I.—1886-'7.: A Magazine Devoted to the Brotherhood of Humanity, Theosophy in America, and the Study of Occult Science, Philosophy, and Aryan Literature
Various
An exploration of ancient philosophies, esoteric traditions, and the untapped capacities of human consciousness offers a spiritual alternative to rigid dogmatism and materialist despair.