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All free summaries — page 578
34,239 public-domain books, summarised. Page 578 of 714.

Down the Rhine
Oliver Optic
Restless American academy students sail down Europe's most famous river while wrestling with nautical discipline, petty mutinies, and high-society romance.

Duologues and scenes from the novels of Jane Austen
Jane Austen
A keen ear for the natural friction between people turns quiet parlors into electric battlegrounds of ambition, pride, and comedic absurdity.

Five Hundred Dollars: First published in the "Century Magazine"
Heman White Chaplin
A quiet New England village built on seafaring memory, where small-town gossip, stubborn pride, and a misplaced wallet decide the fate of a family.

Fundamental Peace Ideas including The Westphalian Peace Treaty (1648) and The League Of Nations (1919): in connection with International Psychology and Revolutions
Arthur MacDonald
National security cannot survive on isolated sovereignty; true stability demands that states surrender individual power to build a permanent, law-governed international order.

General Smith's Views of the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States
Smith, Joseph, Jr.
A bold, sweeping vision for American renewal promises to heal a fractured country by abolishing slavery through federal purchase, restructuring national banking, and extending the borders of freedom across the continent.

Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXVII, No. 4, October 1850
Various
A rich, diverse miscellany offers a sweeping view into mid-nineteenth-century American literary life, where melodrama, devotional poetry, natural history, and biting humor sit side by side.

Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880: An Illustrated Weekly
Various
A quiet afternoon quickly transforms into a lively demonstration of practical science when a giant homemade kite ascends over a small town.

Harry Watson's High School Days
Frank V. Webster
A crisp winter air and the sharp competitive edge of high school life frame a new boy's fight for his reputation and his father's honor.

Hidden from the Prudent: The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921
Paul Jones
A sightless Ute elder holds a silver confirmation cross and sees what sophisticated minds miss: true religion demands living as brothers, not fighting.

Hogarth
C. Lewis (Charles Lewis) Hind
An artist breaks with European convention to paint the unpolished life of eighteenth-century London, forcing his era to see its own vices, humor, and unexpected beauty.

Horses Nine: Stories of Harness and Saddle
Sewell Ford
Nine working horses navigate the demands, cruelties, and occasional graces of human control, each earning a distinct legacy under harness or saddle.

In Pawn
Ellis Parker Butler
A lazy father plays at being a saint, pawns his honest son to pay a debt, and unleashes a quiet, small-town comedy of romantic lies and river town trades.

Indian Child Life
Therese O. (Therese Osterheld) Deming
A gentle, episodic exploration of Indigenous childhood across North America, capturing daily adventures, animal companionships, and traditional lore.

Introductory notes on lying-in institutions
Florence Nightingale
When specialized lying-in wards trigger fatal disease outbreaks rather than safety, a critical inquiry reveals that improper hospital design and management endanger the very mothers and infants they were built to protect.

John G. Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides, volume 3 (of 3)
John Gibson Paton
A white-bearded Scottish preacher travels the globe, braving sleepless nights and hostile theological debates to secure funding, political bans, and a new steamship for his beloved South Pacific mission.

Jonah and Co
Dornford Yates
Wealthy, witty, and entirely irrepressible, an English family takes to the sunny roads of post-war France, turning broken magnetos, mistaken identities, and rogue antique dealers into a masterclass in high-spirited living.

Jonathan and His Continent: Rambles Through American Society
Max O'Rell
This sharp, witty nineteenth-century travelogue views the bustling energy of Gilded Age America through the charmingly skeptical eyes of a cultured French observer.

Journal of Entomology and Zoology, Vol. 11, No. 2, June 1919
Various
A meticulous, locally focused glimpse into early twentieth-century marine biology and entomology captures the vibrant biodiversity of Southern California's coastal and mountain habitats through exact microscopic observation.

Lessons in the Small Catechism of Dr. Martin Luther: For the Senior Department of Lutheran Sunday-Schools and for General Use
Martin Luther
A structured guide through foundational Christian beliefs, this handbook breaks down complex theology into accessible lessons on daily living, morality, and spiritual devotion.

Letters of the Motor Girl
Ethellyn Gardner
Fourteen-year-old Elsie drives her beloved Franklin car through a whirlwind of early-twentieth-century road trips, outlandish family inventions, high-flying airship voyages, and comedic domestic misadventures.

Lorelei of the Red Mist
Leigh Brackett
An Earthly outlaw dies on the violent, fog-bound seas of Venus, only to wake in the borrowed flesh of a disgraced native warrior.

Madame de Treymes
Edith Wharton
Two distinct standards of honor collide in turn-of-the-century Paris, forcing an American suitor to choose between his own moral integrity and the woman he loves.

Marxism and Darwinism
Anton Pannekoek
Nature and human society follow separate evolutionary rules, and confusing the two distorts both biology and politics. Understanding how human technology alters the struggle for existence reveals why biological competition cannot justify economic inequality.

Materialized apparitions
Edward Augustus Brackett
Can the dead return to take on solid flesh, touch our hands, and speak to us in daylight? A nineteenth-century observer sets out to test the physical reality of spirit mediumship and finds himself drawn into an unexpected world of vanishing forms and intimate encounters.

Memoirs of Orange Jacobs
Orange Jacobs
A youth who survived the overland trek of 1852 spent eight decades growing alongside the Pacific Northwest, leaving behind a sharp, humorous, and deeply felt chronicle of a vanishing American frontier.

Mexican Copper Tools: The Use of Copper by the Mexicans Before the Conquest
Philipp J. J. (Philipp Johann Josef) Valentini
A painstaking study reveals how early American civilizations forged tools and measured time long before European contact.

Military Service and Adventures in the Far East: Vol. 1 (of 2): Including Sketches of the Campaigns Against the Afghans in 1839, and the Sikhs in 1845-6
Daniel Henry MacKinnon
A young British officer marches north toward the Afghan frontier, recording the absurdities, deadlies, and vast distances of an imperial army moving across 19th-century Asia.

Motor Boat Boys Among the Florida Keys
Louis Arundel
Six teenage boys pilot a trio of motorboats down the Florida coast, turning their wilderness expedition into a spirited fishing tournament full of unexpected hazards.

Motor Tours in the West Country
Stawell, Rodolph, Mrs.
A motor tour through the West Country reveals a landscape rich in historical memory, where quiet country lanes suddenly open onto dramatic coastlines, ancient ruins, and forgotten battlefields.

Mountain Moggy: The Stoning of the Witch
William Henry Giles Kingston
Cruel village antics burn a helpless woman’s home, but a young boy’s bitter mistake opens a path to unexpected mercy and lost family.

Mr. Punch's After-Dinner Stories
Unknown
A seat at the Victorian table turns out to be a surprisingly chaotic affair of strict social posturing, outrageous restaurant bills, and the perpetual terror of bad wine.

My Lady Rotha: A Romance
Stanley John Weyman
In the shadow of the Thirty Years' War, a young Protestant noblewoman leaves her ancestral home, plunging directly into the chaos, lawlessness, and competing allegiances of a continent torn apart by religious conflict.

Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc
Various
In a small weekly issue from March 1851, nineteenth-century scholars, collectors, and curious readers trade obscure facts, resolve textual errors, and debate history in a vibrant, communal forum.

"Old Put" the patriot
Frederick A. (Frederick Albion) Ober
Before a formal military rank ever touched his name, Israel Putnam had already squeezed through a frozen, knee-scraping rock fissure to face down a cornered wolf in the dark.

On the Plains with Custer: The Western Life and Deeds of the Chief With the Yellow Hair, Under Whom Served Boy Bugler Ned Fletcher, When in the Troublous Years 1866–1876 the Fighting Seventh Cavalry Helped to Win Pioneer Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota for White Civilization and Today's Peace
Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand) Sabin
A orphan boy rides with George Armstrong Custer through decade of brutal Indian campaigning, witnessing the tragic, bloody reshaping of the American West from the saddle of the Seventh Cavalry.

Overweight and Underweight
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
Weight management is not a matter of rapid magic or moral failure, but a lifetime accounting of energy, habit, and medical common sense.

Ozymandias
Ivar Jorgensen
On a desolate, nameless world at the edge of the galaxy, five scientists and seven soldiers stumble upon an immortal alien machine standing alone among the dust.

Pat the Lighthouse Boy
Evelyn Everett-Green
A frail city boy finds health and a strange, sea-encircled world when his family moves to a remote ocean lighthouse.

Phylogeny of the Waxwings and Allied Birds
M. Dale (Martin Dale) Arvey
An exacting anatomical study tracks how subtle physical adaptations expose the evolutionary bonds linking waxwings to their obscure tropical relatives across millions of years.

Poems
Samuel G. (Samuel Griswold) Goodrich
In every landscape, from far-off Peru to the high peaks of Lake Superior, a quiet moral world waits to be uncovered.

Poems
William Dean Howells
A sharp longing for vanished youth cuts through quiet observations of nature, forgotten domestic dramas, and the lingering scars of war.

Prudence of the Parsonage
Ethel Hueston
In the dusty Methodism of small-town Iowa, nineteen-year-old Prudence Starr holds a lively motherless family together by sheer force of devotion and practical grace.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, 1920-03-31
Various
A sharp, laughing look at post-war Britain, where returning soldiers, overwhelmed husbands, and harassed citizens navigate bureaucratic absurdities, modern technology, and the subtle absurdity of everyday domestic life.

Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892
Various
A panoramic look at late-Victorian British society, capturing the anxieties, hypocrisies, and absurdities of a nation caught between tradition and modern friction.

Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 105, July 29th 1893
Various
In an era when Parliament squabbled over the shape of the British Empire and Londoners flocked to water shows, a weekly magazine captured every passing absurdity with unflagging irreverence.

Randy's Summer: A Story for Girls
Amy Brooks
A gentle, sunlit atmosphere fills this quiet tale of country life, where small domestic choices carry the weight of real moral growth.

Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley
C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson
An impulsive teenager's scheme to buy a dress triggers a chain of events that exposes betrayal, aerial warfare, and high-stakes military secrecy.

Serbia in Light and Darkness: With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916)
Nikolaj Velimirović
To lose a kingdom is to lose a geographic frame, but to endure as a people requires an unshakable interior life.