The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 154
8,211 public-domain books, summarised. Page 154 of 172.

The Wizard of Wall Street and His Wealth
Trumbull White
A quiet, frail man accumulates the largest personal fortune of his century, leaving behind a legacy of financial devastation, brilliant strategic manipulation, and a nation left questioning the moral limits of unbridled American capitalism.

"1683-1920": The Fourteen Points and What Became of Them—Foreign Propaganda in the Public Schools—Rewriting the History of the United States—The Espionage Act and How It Worked—"Illegal and Indefensible Blockade" of the Central Powers—1,000,000 Victims of Starvation—Our Debt to France and to Germany—The War Vote in Congress—Truth About the Belgian Atrocities—Our Treaty with Germany and How Observed—The Alien Property Custodianship—Secret Will of Cecil Rhodes—Racial Strains in American Life—Germantown Settlement of 1683 and a Thousand Other Topics
Frederick Franklin Schrader
This polemic challenges the official wartime narrative of the early 20th century, arguing that American history and public opinion were being systematically distorted to serve British geopolitical interests.

A Sportsman's Sketches: Works of Ivan Turgenev, Volume I
Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
A hunter wanders the fields, forests, and estates of nineteenth-century Russia, recording quiet encounters with peasants, landholders, and serfs. His observations lay bare the human costs of a feudal society with understated, devastating clarity.

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.

Famous Men of Science
Sarah Knowles Bolton
Long night hours and silent labor shape the men who reveal the universe, proving that true scientific triumph comes from quiet, persistent work.

Now It Can Be Told
Philip Gibbs
Combat on the Western Front strips away every romantic illusion, leaving only mud, shattered limbs, and the quiet, enduring valor of young men who march into engineered slaughter.

Sweden
Victor Alfred Nilsson
Through centuries of struggle, northern wilderness, and imperial ambitions, a nation defines itself less by its victories than by the enduring spirit of its self-governing people.

The Law and the Lady
Wilkie Collins
A bride discovers that her new husband married her under a false name to conceal a horrifying past—a trial for his first wife’s murder that ended in an ambiguous verdict.

The Story of Magellan and The Discovery of the Philippines
Hezekiah Butterworth
Driven by an unyielding spirit of discovery, a Portuguese navigator braves unknown seas to unlock a western passage to the East, altering world history forever.

The taste of honey
Edna Worthley Underwood
A series of intellectual sketches and literary reflections, this volume captures a life spent reading across borders, celebrating the timeless power of global poetry and prose. It serves as a defiant, scholarly homage to the art of thinking deeply.

Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and His Wonderful Dog Bulger
Ingersoll Lockwood
A tiny German aristocrat and his loyal hound wander across a fantastical Earth, surviving inflated aerial societies and rolling spherical humanoids through sheer brass, quick wits, and stubborn devotion to one another.

Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Spanish Language in the British Museum. Vol. 4
Pascual de Gayangos
This scholarly register acts as a systematic map through the British Museum’s vast collection of Spanish-language records, meticulously organizing centuries of imperial administration, ecclesiastical correspondence, and private history into an accessible reference for the historical researcher.

King Philip: Makers of History
John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
Before New England towns grew calm, two worlds tore each other apart in the shadows of an untamed wilderness.

Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third: From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1
Buckingham and Chandos, Richard Plantagenet Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville, Duke of
Behind the polished facades of late eighteenth-century British statecraft lay a world of constant friction, where personal rivalries and sudden crises dictated the fate of an empire.

Selections from American poetry, with special reference to Poe, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier
Unknown
This collection serves as a historical and literary survey of American verse, documenting the evolution of a national voice from the colonial strictures of the seventeenth century to the expansive, democratic spirit of the post-Civil War era.

Sinister Street, vol. 1
Compton MacKenzie
A boy's vivid imagination transforms a shadowy Kensington house into a realm of terrifying phantoms and quiet wonders, setting him on a long, introspective journey toward manhood.

Tar : A Midwest childhood
Sherwood Anderson
A young boy stands at the edge of an Ohio field, watching a threshing machine turn wheat into a river of gold, and realizes that the quiet adult world is filled with secret labors, hidden griefs, and unexplained longings.

The Complex Vision
John Cowper Powys
A philosophical inquiry into the nature of human consciousness, this work explores how our diverse inner faculties assemble a unified reality in an eternally dualistic universe.

The Life of Nelson, Volume 2: The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain
A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
A genius for naval warfare collides with personal frailty as Great Britain's greatest admiral shapes the fate of Europe while breaking his own life apart.

The Story of the Great War, Volume 7: American Food and Ships
Unknown
A global war turns on logisticians and mud, shifting from eastern collapses to the fresh weight of American iron.

The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Eleven Volumes, Volume 06: Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons
Samuel Johnson
This collection assembles a lifetime of sharp-witted critique and biographical insight, capturing the intellectual pulse of the eighteenth century through one of literature’s most formidable minds. It serves as both a historical record and a masterclass in discerning judgment.

Wilfrid Cumbermede
George MacDonald
A restless search for truth and belonging drives a young man to uncover the secrets of his ancestry, navigating the divide between his own humble origins and the pride of an ancient, crumbling estate.

Abraham Lincoln, Volume I
Morse, John T., Jr. (John Torrey)
This detailed biography captures the steady emergence of Abraham Lincoln alongside the descent of a divided republic into civil war. John Torrey Morse Jr. reconstructs the era not as a sudden calamity, but as the unavoidable culmination of a long moral and political crisis.

An inquiry into the permanent causes of the decline and fall of powerful and wealthy nations
William Playfair
A nation’s rise creates the very habits, luxuries, and debts that guarantee its eventual ruin unless rulers actively intervene.

Ancient China Simplified
Edward Harper Parker
A network of jealous feudal states chips away at an old imperial center, transforming ritual governance into brutal realpolitik.

De Tribus Impostoribus, A. D. 1230: The Three Impostors: Translated (with notes and comments) from a French manuscript of the work written in the year 1716, with a dissertation on the original treatise and a bibliography of the various editions
Unknown
The search for truth often leads to the most dangerous questions, and this volume gathers the long-forbidden arguments that once threatened the foundations of established faith. It serves as a historical record of radical, anonymous dissent.

Life of John Milton
Richard Garnett
A dedicated idealist moves through academic clashes, civil war, personal heartbreak, and political ruin, ultimately channeling his unyielding convictions into an immortal masterpiece of cosmic poetry.

Life of Mozart, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Otto Jahn
A vast, exhaustive portrait of a genius at his absolute peak captures the feverish final decade in Vienna, where creative mastery and crushing financial precarity collides in a radiant burst of operatic and instrumental invention.

Margaret Sanger: an autobiography
Margaret Sanger
A tireless advocate chronicles her transformation from a modest nursing student into the architect of a global movement for reproductive autonomy.

Old Indian Legends
Zitkala-Sa
Small acts of vanity and greed tear apart the quiet harmony of the plains, where even the smallest creatures must outwit tricksters and monsters to survive.

Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
This guide to the landscape of human thought serves as a bridge between the physical world of modern science and the internal world of the human mind. It offers a rigorous, accessible map for navigating the deepest questions of existence.

The Age of Invention: A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest
Holland Thompson
A sweeping survey traces how practical ingenuity, mechanical trial, and human persistence transformed primitive wilderness tools into the interconnected machines of modern industrial civilization.

The Evolution of Photography: With a Chronological Record of Discoveries, Inventions, Etc., Contributions to Photographic Literature, and Personal Reminescences Extending over Forty Years
Werge, John, active 1854-1890
A pioneer’s firsthand memory unlocks the early history of photography, recording how chemical discoveries and mechanical ingenuity turned a fragile experiment into a universal visual language.

The Ivory Gate, a new edition
Walter Besant
A respected London lawyer suffers from dual consciousness, secretly living a second life as a radical visionary attempting to dismantle the very financial structure he defends by day.

The Last of the Barons
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
A towering feudal titan clashes with an emerging modern world, torn between his devotion to a charismatic young king and the relentless dictates of his own unyielding pride.

The Life of Bret Harte, with Some Account of the California Pioneers
Henry Childs Merwin
A quiet young clerk from the East travels to wild Gold Rush California, captures its perilous frontier life in vivid prose, and finds global fame—only to spend his final years battling debt and illness in exile.

The Paston Letters, A.D. 1422-1509. Volume 6 (of 6), Part 1 (Letters, Chronological Table): New Complete Library Edition
Unknown
A collection of fifteenth-century letters offers an intimate window into the lives of a Norfolk gentry family navigating civil war, legal disputes, and daily estate management across generations.

The Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, Vol. 2 (of 2)
William Crooke
A dark gaze crosswise over a newborn cradle casts a sudden chill, driving a village to tie protective cords and whisper ancient names against the unseen.

Theory & History of Historiography
Benedetto Croce
Historical consciousness is the defining act of the human spirit, yet we remain remarkably confused about what it means to truly understand the past. This investigation provides a systematic account of how historical thought has evolved from ancient chronicles to modern philosophical inquiry.

A short history of the printing press and of the improvements in printing machinery from the time of Gutenberg up to the present day
Robert Hoe
The evolution of the printing press is a story of mechanical ingenuity, tracing the transition from simple wooden hand-presses to massive, lightning-fast rotary machines. This technical history documents the relentless pursuit of speed, precision, and the democratization of information through engineering.

Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth, With a Catalogue of His Works
John Nichols
This account serves as both a primary biography of an iconic English artist and a comprehensive manual for the serious collector. It documents the rise, works, and professional struggles of a man who used his pencil to define the social satire of the eighteenth century.

Georgian Folk Tales
Marjory Scott Wardrop
These timeless narratives from the Caucasus preserve the wit, wonder, and stark resilience of a people living at the crossroads of empires. They offer a rare window into a rich, ancient oral tradition.

Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs
Angus D. Webster
Choosing the right flora for a garden is a transformative act, moving beyond the monotonous reliance on common staples to embrace the untapped diversity of the botanical world. This guide serves as a practical, encyclopedic companion for those seeking to diversify their landscapes with hardy, flowering ornamental…

Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul
H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
A humble draper’s apprentice is thrust into the dizzying heights of wealth, only to discover that the most difficult thing in the world is simply being himself.

The Golden Threshold
Sarojini Naidu
The world is a tapestry of vivid, fleeting beauty and profound human sorrow, captured in verses that shimmer like sunlight on a lotus stream. These poems serve as a bridge between the soul’s deepest longings and the vibrant pulse of daily life.

The So-called Human Race
Bert Leston Taylor
A puckish observer of the human comedy offers a curated collection of newspaper wit, literary parody, and sharp-eyed social commentary. This assembly of brief, daily dispatches captures the transient ironies of early 20th-century life with a timeless, cynical grace.

The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England: Including the Rural and Domestic Recreations, May Games, Mummeries, Shows, Processions, Pageants, and Pompous Spectacles from the Earliest Period to the Present Time
Joseph Strutt
A definitive chronicle of English recreation, this expansive survey documents the evolution of public spectacles, rural games, and the diverse entertainments that shaped the social landscape from antiquity through the early nineteenth century.

Barrack-room ballads
Rudyard Kipling
These verses capture the grit, humor, and resignation of the common British soldier serving in the Victorian era’s far-flung outposts. They transform the harsh realities of military life into enduring, rhythmic song.