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All free summaries — page 147
7,238 public-domain books, summarised. Page 147 of 151.
The Physiology of Taste
Brillat-Savarin
The human palate is a delicate instrument, and the act of eating, when elevated by intelligence, transforms a simple physical necessity into a lifelong art.
The World Before the Deluge
Louis Figuier
An incandescent, cooling globe slowly hardens into stone, weaving a vast natural history of ancient seas, monstrous reptiles, and lost primeval forests.
Brazilian Literature
Isaac Goldberg
A single continent's literature comes alive through sweeping historical analysis, uncovering how a distinct national voice emerged from colonial ties and European forms.
Evidences of Christianity
William Paley
An unshakeable belief can survive severe trial, but only genuine historical truth explains why its first witnesses chose suffering over safety.
Good-bye to all that
Robert Graves
A young poet grows up in the rigid world of English boarding schools, survives the horrors of the Western Front, and struggles to rebuild his life in a shattered postwar society.
Henrik Ibsen
Edmund Gosse
An impoverished, combative young clerk transforms himself through sheer force of will into a towering dramatist, reshaping modern theater while remaining a lifelong outsider.
My Memoirs
Marguerite Steinheil
An infamous scandal night, a dead President, and a double murder in a Parisian villa frame this astonishing true-crime memoir. Marguerite Steinheil transforms her lived nightmare into a brilliant, defensive narrative of political intrigue, high society, and survival.
The Classic Myths in English Literature and in Art (2nd ed.) (1911): Based Originally on Bulfinch's "Age of Fable" (1855)
Thomas Bulfinch
A world illuminated by divine fire loses its innocence, yet from that theft grows every songs, sorrow, and enduring wonder of mankind.
The Female Quixote
Charlotte Lennox
A young woman views her quiet world entirely through the grandiose lens of French romance novels, mistaking ordinary suitors for heroic suitors and simple misunderstandings for deadly courtly intrigues.
The Hill of Dreams
Arthur Machen
A lonely young dreamer escapes the stifling routine of provincial England by retreating into an inner world of ancient mysteries and ecstatic artistic obsession.
The History of England, from the Accession of James II
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
A fragile new monarchy struggles to survive as foreign wars, domestic conspiracies, parliamentary friction, and financial transformation reshape the English state.
The Magic Fishbone: A Holiday Romance from the Pen of Miss Alice Rainbird, Aged 7
Charles Dickens
A seven-year-old narrator turns domestic hardship into a triumphant fairy tale where patience outshines magic and practical resourcefulness saves a royal family.
The principles of science
William Stanley Jevons
A rigorous, original treatise demonstrates that scientific discovery operates by testing hypothetical deductions against observable facts, placing probability and symbolic logic at the center of all empirical inquiry.
The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes, Volume 03: The Rambler, Volume II
Samuel Johnson
Observations on human flaw, moral duty, and the quiet absurdities of daily life converge in a voice that is as severe in its standards as it is deeply compassionate toward the frailties of existence.
Understood Betsy
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Sheltered, over-protected nine-year-old Elizabeth Ann is sent away to live with distant, practical relatives on a Vermont farm, where she unexpectedly discovers her own independence, practical capability, and quiet self-reliance.
West Point: An Intimate Picture of the National Military Academy and of the Life of the Cadet
Robert C. (Robert Charlwood) Richardson
Beneath the severe granite battlements along the Hudson, raw American youth transforms into a unified, disciplined officer corps bound by a singular code of honor.
Handbook of Medical Entomology
William A. (William Albert) Riley
An essential bridge between biology and public health, this survey exposes the unseen arthropod vectors driving global disease. It offers a precise, grounded map of how microscopic parasites rely on insects to infect human hosts.
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904
L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery
A quiet rural community in eastern Canada frames a collection of small human dramas where mistaken identities, family feuds, and buried affection govern the daily pace of life.
Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906
Various
A radical inaugural journal challenges state force, religious dogma, and social hypocrisy, offering a vision where individual freedom, unhampered love, and collective liberation replace structural oppression.
Omnilingual
H. Beam Piper
Across fifty million miles of void and fifty thousand years of silence, a human expedition to Mars uncovers a lost civilization—only to realize that every dead word remains locked in darkness until science reveals a Rosetta Stone hidden in plain sight.
Stories from The Arabian Nights
Laurence Housman
When a woodcutter overhears a cave door swing open at a magic phrase, he unlocks a world where cunning servants outwit murderous thieves and ancient spells shape human destiny.
The art of travel
Francis Galton
A practical handbook written from experience, this manual turns raw wilderness into a manageable workshop for the self-reliant explorer.
The Bible Story
Newton Marshall Hall
A multi-volume guide to the scriptures pairs dramatic narrative retellings with historical background, classic poetry, and famous fine art.
The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
A young woman weaves a tapestry of endless night-time stories to stay the hand of a monarch intent on execution, saving a kingdom through the enchantment of narrative.
The Holy War, Made by King Shaddai Upon Diabolus, for the Regaining of the Metropolis of the World
John Bunyan
A soul falls to treason, endures a siege, and learns that its hardest battles begin after the hero wins.
The Number Concept: Its Origin and Development
Levi L. (Levi Leonard) Conant
An exhaustive cross-cultural survey demonstrates that human counting is not an innate mathematical abstraction, but an organic creation carved from physical gestures, language, and everyday survival.
The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell
Thomas Campbell
In a world driven by mechanical progress and sudden political upheaval, these verses pause to examine the quiet price paid by soldiers, exiles, and lovers on the margins of history.
The Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 2 (of 10): Poetry - Volume 2
Alexander Pope
Poetry can instruct the intellect even as it delights the imagination, proving that precision of thought and elegance of expression belong together.
Byeways in Palestine
James Finn
A long-time British official in Jerusalem leaves the beaten paths to record the quiet, forgotten landscapes of mid-nineteenth-century Palestine.
Joan of Arc
Gower, Ronald Sutherland, Lord
Faith in a heavenly calling transforms an obscure peasant girl into the military savior of France, driving her from rural fields to royal courts and bloody battlefields before leading to her betrayal, trial, and ultimate martyrdom.
Les Misérables, v. 2/5: Cosette
Victor Hugo
An escaped ex-convict hazards his newly bought freedom to rescue a neglected child and shepherd her through the shadowy corners of a changing Paris.
More Letters of Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
A vast epistolary archive reveals how world-changing scientific ideas are forged through rigorous empirical debate, meticulous observation, and deep personal alliances across decades of ceaseless inquiry.
The Art of Writing & Speaking the English Language: Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric
Sherwin Cody
Mastering clear expression is less about innate genius and more about disciplined observation, deliberate imitation, and an unyielding commitment to practical mechanics.
The Life Of Thomas Paine, Vol. 1. (of 2): With A History of His Literary, Political and Religious Career in America France, and England
Moncure Daniel Conway
Driven by a determination to rescue Thomas Paine from centuries of partisan libel, Moncure Daniel Conway delivers an exhaustive, sympathetic biography that details the philosopher's crucial role in shaping modern democratic revolutions.
The Turkish Bath, Its Design and Construction
Robert Owen Allsop
A thermal sanctuary's success hinges entirely on the invisible physics of its walls and flues.
A British Rifle Man: The Journals and Correspondence of Major George Simmons, Rifle Brigade, During the Peninsular War and the Campaign of Waterloo
George Simmons
A green-jacketed officer endured years of grueling march and shot in the Peninsular War and at Waterloo, sending home vivid journals and devoted letters that balance the brutal reality of battle with tender family care.
A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition)
Calvin Cutter
The human body operates under natural laws that demand understanding, care, and daily discipline to preserve health and prevent physical decay.
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Law
Roscoe Pound
Law must remain stable to safeguard society, yet it must continuously adapt to human needs. Balancing these competing demands requires a clear philosophy of how justice actually operates.
Curious Creatures in Zoology
John Ashton
An illustrated archive of early monster lore resurrects forgotten natural histories, revealing how medieval imagination and ancient observation shaped the boundaries of the living world.
Days of Heaven Upon Earth
A. B. (Albert B.) Simpson
Daily spiritual practice offers a year-long path away from human effort and into the quiet, transformative presence of an indwelling Christ.
The Complete Works of Artemus Ward (HTML edition)
Artemus Ward
A traveling showman wanders across a young, chaotic America, offering sharp-eyed observations dressed in deliberate misspellings, deadpan absurdities, and an unyielding refusal to take anyone’s solemnity at face value.
The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects
Louis Figuier
Small six-legged creatures construct towering fortresses, launch elaborate strategic warfare, and organize highly sophisticated societies entirely beneath human notice.
The Plague of Lust, Vol. 2 (of 2): Being a History of Venereal Disease in Classical Antiquity
Julius Rosenbaum
A deep historical inquiry into classical antiquity reveals how ancient societies understood, experienced, and attempted to manage venereal afflictions through medical, cultural, and environmental frameworks.
The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.)
Unknown
A rustic farmhand dodges domestic chores for a afternoon by the river, while an urban household unravels over a dinner dispute with a newly hired maid.
The Woman in Black
E. C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
A ruthless American tycoon dies by a bullet in an English garden, leaving behind a brilliant puzzle that shatters every tidy assumption a clever investigator tries to make about human behavior.
A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century
Henry A. (Henry Augustin) Beers
Long before nineteenth-century poets claimed the wilderness as their temple, eighteenth-century scholars, satirists, and literary fakers were quietly dismantling the strict, formal rules of classicism to build the foundation of English Romanticism.
Carpentry for Boys: In a Simple Language, Including Chapters on Drawing, Laying Out Work, Designing and Architecture With 250 Original Illustrations
James Slough Zerbe
A clear-eyed 1914 instruction manual transforms raw timber and sharp steel into a complete curriculum for body, mind, and character.
Death comes for the archbishop
Willa Cather
A refined French priest rides into the vast, sun-baked wilderness of the American Southwest to build a diocese, forging a quiet legacy of faith and friendship against a backdrop of ancient cultures.