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4,129 public-domain books, summarised. Page 86 of 87.

Supplemental Nights to the Book of the Thousand and One Nights
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
A pauper discovers a cave of gold, a tailor blindfolds his way to a murder, and a magical bird restores lost princes turned to stone.

Émile
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Nature alone holds the secret to shaping a human being who is both resilient and uncorrupted by society. To realize this potential, a teacher must clear away the artificial constraints of traditional instruction and let experience take the lead.

How to Succeed
Orison Swett Marden
To build a meaningful life, a person must cultivate unwavering internal character, fierce determination, and absolute focus rather than waiting for external fortune or inherited wealth. True achievement is not an accident of birth, but the direct result of personal effort, disciplined action, and moral integrity.

The General Historie of Virginia, New England & the Summer Isles (Vol. I): Together with the True Travels, Adventures and Observations, and a Sea Grammar
John Smith
A single hand at the helm transforms raw, uncharted wilderness into a precarious new world through sheer force of will, grit, and tireless obsession.

U.S. Copyright Renewals, 1964 July - December
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
A meticulous ledger of intellectual survival captures the formal persistence of American letters, science, and popular culture across a single pivotal half-year. It records the exact moment creative works claim extended legal protection.

German Science Reader: An Introduction to Scientific German, for Students of Physics, Chemistry and Engineering
Charles Frederick Kroeh
Mastering technical literature in a foreign language requires a direct bridge between abstract concepts and specific vocabulary. Clear structure turns complex equations, physical laws, and chemical transformations into accessible reading material.

Louise de la Vallière
Alexandre Dumas
Courtiers whisper in shadowy corridors, lovers exchange dangerous promises, and the four legendary musketeers find themselves drawn into a maze of political ambition and personal betrayal.

The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, gentleman
Laurence Sterne
A baby is born into a world where a broken nose, a mischosen name, and a father's convoluted theories shape a life before it even properly begins.

The Man Who Would Be King
Rudyard Kipling
Two ambitious, down-on-their-luck British adventurers set out from colonial India to conquer Kafiristan, crowning themselves kings before their own human flaws expose their divine charade and spark a ruinous downfall.

Excursions
Henry David Thoreau
A quiet revolution awaits the reader who steps onto the trail of the American wilderness, where the rustle of fallen oak leaves and the scent of wild apples offer a richer education than any university.

More English Fairy Tales
Unknown
Ancient folklore comes to life through spirited English tricksters, shape-shifting spirits, and clever rustic fools.

Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts
Girl Scouts of the United States of America
A comprehensive manual transforms daily life into an arena of outdoor mastery, practical citizenship, and self-reliant domestic skill. Designed for young women, it grounds personal growth in observation, physical fitness, and community service.

The Jew and American Ideals
John Spargo
When a sudden wave of conspiracy theories threatens to fracture a nation's social fabric, defending a targeted minority becomes the ultimate test of a republic's core values.

Fireside Stories for Girls in Their Teens
Margaret W. (Margaret White) Eggleston
A quiet choice on a mountain trail, a strike in a lonely city, or a shared craft in a camp-fire circle can alter the direction of a young life forever.

Riders of the Purple Sage
Zane Grey
Deep in the Utah borderlands, a courageous woman fights to protect her home, her hearth, and her freedom, only to discover that her greatest sanctuary lies in the arms of an infamous gunman.

Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore, Volume 2 (of 2): A picturesque history of the coaching age
Charles G. (Charles George) Harper
Long before locomotives reshaped the landscape, a network of horse-drawn mail coaches pulsed across Britain, defining the pace, architecture, and social rhythm of an era.

The conquest of happiness
Bertrand Russell
Human beings should be happy, yet modern life leaves the vast majority trapped in quiet misery. Escape requires no mystical revelation or complex philosophy, but a straightforward, practical effort to dismantle self-absorption and engage directly with the surrounding world.

The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life
Francis Parkman
Bound for the high plains and Rocky Mountains in 1846, a young Bostonian braves disease, wilderness, and erratic companions to record the vanishing wilderness of the American West.

The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Volume 1
Alexander Pope
Mastering every shade of verse from delicate rural landscapes to razor-sharp social satire, this volume captures an entire era’s intellectual life through one poet's unmatched mastery of heroic couplets.

The Science of Human Nature: A Psychology for Beginners
William Henry Pyle
Human behavior is not an insoluble mystery, but a predictable sequence of physical stimuli and neural responses that can be systematically observed, measured, and improved.

History of the World War
March, Francis A., Jr.
Millions of young men died across Europe to teach militaristic nations that humanity will no longer tolerate the exploitation of free peoples.

Motion pictures, 1960-1969
Library of Congress. Copyright Office
A comprehensive catalog of American film registrations across a decade reveals the vast, kaleidoscopic landscape of 1960s moving image culture.

The Conduct of Life
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Courageously facing the rigid mechanics of existence, a mind discovers that personal power, practical work, and noble ideals can master raw circumstance.

The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Revelation
William Milligan
This rigorous, spiritual commentary examines the Apocalypse of St. John not as a literal timeline of doom, but as a timeless vision of the Church's ongoing earthly conflict and ultimate heavenly security.

The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 5 (of 6)
the Elder Pliny
A sweeping ancient encyclopedia surveys the hidden powers of nature, cataloging thousands of cures extracted from forest trees, roadside weeds, animal glands, and mineral waters. It captures classical antiquity’s desperate attempt to order a chaotic world.

The Philosophy of Spinoza
Benedictus de Spinoza
A radical, systematic dismantling of traditional theology unfolds into a precise mechanical framework of the universe, offering a rigorous blueprint for human freedom through pure reason.

William Shakespeare
Victor Hugo
A passionate defense of artistic genius expands into an sweeping meditation on human thought, social progress, and the eternal conflict between political tyranny and creative freedom.

Napoleon's Marshals
R. P. Dunn-Pattison
An extraordinary aggregate of military talent supported the rise and fall of the First French Empire. This biographical study evaluates the twenty-six soldiers granted the marshal’s baton under Napoleon, tracing how individual character shaped the map of Europe.

The History of Signboards, from the Earliest times to the Present Day
John Camden Hotten
Streets, taverns, and shopfronts reveal the hidden history of everyday life when viewed through the forgotten art hanging directly above their doorways.

Types of News Writing
Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
A practical guide to early twentieth-century American reporting demonstrates how daily life, tragic accidents, and political drama are transformed into structured prose.

Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency: A Lecture Delivered before the Institution of Electrical Engineers, London
Nikola Tesla
Blinding electric sparks, glowing vacuum bulbs, and wireless current vibrations transform an Victorian lecture hall into a staging ground for the future of power.

The Story of Madras
Glyn Barlow
On a windswept stretch of the Coromandel Coast, a modest seventeenth-century English outpost slowly transforms into a sprawling, multi-layered Indian metropolis through decades of siege, trade, and administrative ambition.

The tale of Betsy Butterfly
Arthur Scott Bailey
Among the sunny meadows of Pleasant Valley, a gentle butterfly navigates the comical misunderstandings, petty jealousies, and quirky neighbors of the meadow world.

Moral Principles in Education
John Dewey
True character is not built by memorizing ethical lectures, but by living in a classroom that functions as a cooperative, vibrant social community.

Barry Lyndon
William Makepeace Thackeray
An audacious Irish fortune-hunter blunders and bravadoes his way across eighteenth-century Europe, charting his rise from penniless provincial duels to high-society opulence—and his inevitable, self-inflicted ruin.

Composition
Arthur W. (Arthur Wesley) Dow
Fine art arises not from the passive copying of nature, but from the deliberate, harmonic arrangement of line, mass, and color.

The Child-Voice in Singing: Treated from a physiological and a practical standpoint and especially adapted to schools and boy choirs
Francis E. (Francis Edward) Howard
Shouting damages young vocal cords, yet thousands of children are taught to force their lower registers into a harsh, unnatural scream. This handbook grounds vocal training in physical anatomy to save children's voices.

Barkham Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889
Barkham Burroughs
A single volume of late-nineteenth-century practical advice promises complete self-sufficiency, guiding readers through commercial etiquette, emergency medicine, household recipes, and the surprising wonders of the natural world.

Divine Comedy, Cary's Translation, Complete
Dante Alighieri
A journey across the three realms of the dead tests a living soul against the depths of human sin, the painful work of purification, and the blinding light of divine order.

Fruits of Queensland
Albert H. (Albert Henry) Benson
An expansive survey of subtropical potential, this book outlines how a diverse landscape can host almost every cultivated fruit on Earth.

Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England
Edward Lewes Cutts
Long before the Reformation transformed the countryside, an intricate network of local priests, noble patrons, and parish guilds shaped the daily spiritual and social rhythms of medieval English life.

The Autobiography of an Indian Princess
Maharani of Cooch Behar Sunity Devee
Born into a reformist Calcutta home, an Indian princess navigates the strict demands of royal tradition and Victorian high society without losing her devotion to family.

The Edda, Volume 1: The Divine Mythology of the North
Lucy Winifred Faraday
A clear, scholarly guide to northern paganism, this study dismantles common misconceptions about the Icelandic Eddas to reveal the vibrant, dramatic, and surprisingly original world of Norse myth.

The Jew of Malta
Christopher Marlowe
A villainous merchant turns his infinite capacity for malice against the rulers of Malta after they seize his fortune to pay off an invading army.

The poems of Heine
Heinrich Heine
A sweeping poetic collection captures the ecstasy and agony of Romantic passion, shifting seamlessly from delicate stanzas of heartbreak to biting social satire and mythic visions.

The Robbers
Friedrich Schiller
A bitter, envious younger brother uses malicious lies to drive a celebrated heir into exile, sparking a violent cycle of outlawry, familial devastation, and tragic ruin.

Holborn and Bloomsbury
Walter Besant
London’s architectural memory reveals itself through a systematic perambulation, uncovering layers of civic history embedded within ordinary parish streets.

North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State
Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of North Dakota
A land of sweeping horizons, ancient river valleys, and harsh winters comes vividly to life in this Depression-era portrait of the Northern Prairie State.