The whole shelf
All free summaries — page 174
9,354 public-domain books, summarised. Page 174 of 195.
The Works of Aphra Behn, Volume III
Aphra Behn
A wild, cynical flurry of forced marriages, cross-dressing revenges, Ottoman trickery, and farce shows Restoration comedy at its most rowdy and energetic.
Henry Martyn, Saint and Scholar: First Modern Missionary to the Mohammedans, 1781-1812
George Smith
Driven by an intense inner devotion and an unrelenting scholarly focus, a brilliant young Cambridge mathematician surrenders his academic prospects and personal happiness to bring Christian texts to the 19th-century Islamic world.
Laxdæla Saga: Translated from the Icelandic
Muriel A. C. Press
In the valleys of western Iceland, blood ties, ambition, and pride drive generations into boundlessly cruel feuds.
Milton: Minor Poems
John Milton
Where youthful joy once danced in the shadows of the forest, the soul must eventually confront loss, darkness, and its own mortal boundaries.
PG Edition of Netherlands series
John Lothrop Motley
An extraordinary eighty-year struggle pits a tiny strip of coastal marshes against the world’s most powerful empire, transforming a desperate rebellion for religious and political liberty into a global maritime republic.
Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals: In Two Volumes, Volume II
Samuel Finley Breese Morse
A quiet genius conceives a revolutionary network on an ocean voyage, only to spend decades defending his right to be remembered as its true creator.
Society in America, Volume 1 (of 2)
Harriet Martineau
A sharp, perceptive traveler journeys through a young, bustling republic, dismantling European misconceptions while exposing the deep moral contradictions that threaten its democratic promise.
Stalky & Co
Rudyard Kipling
A trio of clever, rebellious schoolboys wages a relentless war of wits against overbearing masters and self-righteous peers at a Victorian military prep school, forging an unwritten code that ultimately prepares them for empire.
The American Mind: The E. T. Earl Lectures
Bliss Perry
To trace the true character of a country's literature, one must look beneath its surface arts to find the shared temper, democratic ideals, and moral habits of its people.
The Empire of Russia: From the Remotest Periods to the Present Time
John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
Centuries of chaotic warfare, autocratic ambition, and cultural transformation shape a vast northern empire from its early medieval origins through its nineteenth-century global prominence.
The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852
Various
A vibrant microcosm of mid-nineteenth-century thought, this edition gathers high literary fiction, scientific breakthroughs, historical investigations, and international news into a single, kinetic portrait of an expanding intellectual world.
The Voiage and Travayle of Sir John Maundeville Knight: Which treateth of the way towards Hierusalem and of marvayles of Inde with other ilands and countreys
Mandeville, John, Sir
A quest across the known world dissolves into a vivid panorama of monstrous beasts, strange customs, and distant lands where sacred history and outrageous legend bleed into one another.
William Clayton's Journal: A Daily Record of the Journey of the Original Company of "Mormon" Pioneers from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake
William Clayton
An English clerk sets out across the American wilderness with a band of displaced believers, measuring every mile of the trail while trying to keep his family, his health, and his devotion intact.
American Eloquence, Volume 1: Studies In American Political History (1896)
Unknown
When a young republic sets out to define its own powers, every debate becomes a foundational drama about the nature of freedom and authority.
Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles
Daniel Hack Tuke
A historical journey across the British Isles uncovers a centuries-long evolution from brutal, superstitious confinement to scientific, compassionate mental healthcare reform.
Europe and the Faith: "Sine auctoritate nulla vita"
Hilaire Belloc
Europe is not a mere collection of neighboring territories, but a single, continuous living organism whose central vital force has always been the Catholic Church.
Famous composers and their works, Vol. 2
Unknown
Artistic creation requires a delicate, perilous balance between untamed genius and the unyielding demands of patron, theater, and public taste.
Homer and His Age
Andrew Lang
To read the ancient epics as a patchwork of competing fragments is to miss the vivid, unified world that brought them into being.
Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains
Charles A. Eastman
A rare, insider portrayal of North American Indian leaders, where personal honor meets the tragic force of a changing continent.
London to Ladysmith via Pretoria
Winston Churchill
A young war correspondent travels to South Africa, falls into enemy hands, escapes on foot through hostile territory, and returns to the front line to witness the costly, agonizing relief of a besieged British garrison.
Modern Painters, Volume 5 (of 5)
John Ruskin
The final movement of a monumental aesthetic project, this volume meditates on the growth of trees, the forms of clouds, and the moral character of the great painters.
Slow Burn
Henry Still
A sabotaged space station hurtles toward a fiery atmospheric death after a vindictive politician triggers a disaster. With no rescue rocket and limited options, ninety men must find a way to defy physics and survive.**
The International Auxiliary Language Esperanto: Grammar & Commentary
George Cox
This guide introduces a created tongue designed to connect people across national borders without displacing native speeches. It details a system structured for clarity, rapid learning, and logical order.
The Scientific American Boy
A. Russell (Alexander Russell) Bond
A group of resourceful boys transforms an island summer into a masterclass in practical engineering, turning timber, rope, and raw determination into functional bridges, sails, and wilderness shelters. <Image alt="Original cover of The Scientific American Boy showing campers around a campfire with engineering…
The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
Charles Lamb
A varied collection of drama, poetry, and satirical epigrams reveals a quiet literary mind grappling with personal grief, domestic quietude, and the fickle nature of the public stage.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Mitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir
From a cramped surgeon’s berth aboard HMS Rattlesnake to the fierce intellectual battlegrounds of Victorian London, a self-taught naturalist transforms how humanity understands the living world, the origin of species, and the limits of human knowledge.
Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1
John Roby
In high-ceilinged halls, damp mossy woods, and lonely stone chapels, the ancient ghosts, witches, and iron-willed barons of Lancashire play out their dark, forgotten destinies.
A serious proposal to the Ladies, for the advancement of their true and greatest interest (In Two Parts)
Mary Astell
Instead of squandering energy on transient fashions and flatteries, women are invited to cultivate the mind—a lasting treasure that age cannot diminish nor opinion distort.
Alexandria: A History and a Guide
E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster
A coastal city built on a narrow limestone strip between sea and lake rises from a conqueror's design, flourishes through intellect and faith, decays into a silent landscape, and re-emerges into modernity.
"And they thought we wouldn't fight"
Floyd Phillips Gibbons
A wounded American war correspondent witnesses the United States military transform from an untested, scattered arrival into an independent frontline force that helps break the German offensive in France.
![Cover of Believe it or not! [1929]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/believe-it-or-not-1929-robert-l-robert-leroy-ripley.webp)
Believe it or not! [1929]
Robert L. (Robert LeRoy) Ripley
Across the globe, human history and nature conspire to produce realities far stranger than any fiction writer could credibly invent.
Cambridge Essays on Education
Unknown
A vision of learning that elevates the human spirit above mechanical drill, aiming to reshape both the individual and the future of society.
Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Vol. 2 of 7
Edgar Thurston
An expansive, highly detailed colonial survey maps the intricate social hierarchies, marriage customs, and ritual obligations of southern India’s castes and tribal communities.
China
Demetrius Charles Boulger
A long continuity of culture, broken by violent internal collapses and constant northern invasions, defines the oldest living empire.
Constantinople: The Story of the Old Capital of the Empire
William Holden Hutton
A solitary bastion of Christian authority stands amid centuries of shifting empires, its stone walls bearing the scars of violent sieges and its magnificent sanctuaries slowly yielding to the domes and minarets of a conquering faith.
Cousin Pons
Honoré de Balzac
A timid collector of art finds himself preyed upon by the very family that has long treated him as a social convenience. This is a devastating anatomy of greed, betrayal, and the cold indifference of nineteenth-century Parisian society.
Essays of Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
A retired French nobleman sits down in his tower library to examine his own mind, turning his doubts, habits, and private observations into a radical new form of literature.
My Autobiography: A Fragment
F. Max (Friedrich Max) Müller
Formed in grief, tempered by raucous student days, and refined in European libraries, a brilliant philologist constructs an unvarnished account of his journey toward unlocking ancient Eastern texts.
Pioneers in Canada
Harry Johnston
Dense forests, treacherous icy waterways, and vast unmapped territories frame a centuries-long struggle to unlock a continent.
Railway Construction
William Hemingway Mills
Engineers who build iron highways must master earth, water, and steel long before the first locomotive rolls down the track.
Selling Things
Orison Swett Marden
The world always listens to a man with a will in him. Mastering the art of commerce requires less manipulation than internal transformation, as success in sales is not a matter of tricks, but a reflection of character and unwavering belief.
Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
A world of hidden doors, transformative curses, and relentless sibling envy opens when nighttime storytelling becomes a matter of life and death.
The Certain Hour (Dizain des Poëtes)
James Branch Cabell
Poets and artists across the centuries discover that while their creative devotion elevates them to heights of passion, it ultimately isolates them from the ordinary world.
The Dark Ages, 476-918
Charles Oman
A fierce and chaotic continent emerges from the ashes of the Western Roman Empire to build the foundation of medieval Europe.
The Gods are Athirst
Anatole France
A fanatic’s idealism is a quiet, deadly force, capable of turning the gentlest soul into a monster of state-sanctioned terror.
The Last Letter
Fritz Leiber
A single hand-written love letter chokes the hyper-automated postal system of twenty-fifth-century New York, causing mechanical breakdowns, administrative panic, and an emergency military deployment.
The Last Voyage: To India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam'
Annie Brassey
A grand, globe-spanning voyage turns unexpectedly poignant as a famous travel writer records her final journey across tropical seas and colonial frontiers.
Zoölogy: The Science of Animal Life: Popular Science Library, Volume XII (of 16), P. F. Collier & Son Company, 1922
Ernest Ingersoll
A meticulous taxonomic journey reveals how nature constructs its vast tapestry, tracing the silent, inexorable movement of life from single-celled organisms to the highest vertebrates.