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History - Modern (1750+) — page 6
364 public-domain history - modern (1750+) books, summarised. Page 6 of 8.
Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud?: The Evidence Given by Sir A.C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined
Joseph McCabe
The persistence of belief often thrives in the dark, but a steady light of inquiry can reveal the mechanisms of the illusions that sustain it.
Red blight
Mary Knight
A nation's fight for self-determination collapses into chaos when deceptive promises of security overshadow the hard reality of human freedom.
The Fifth Leicestershire: A Record of the 1/5th Battalion the Leicestershire Regiment, T.F., During the War, 1914-1919
John David Hills
The mud, the humor, and the harrowing reality of the Great War emerge here not through grand mythology, but through the precise, weary, and steadfast observations of those who lived it.
The National Geographic Magazine, Vol. III., PP. 205-261, I-XXXV, PL. 21, February 19, 1892
Various
Detailed textual analysis, geographic field reports, and meticulous administrative records merge into a single artifact of nineteenth-century inquiry, preserving the exact moment when uncharted territory transformed into measured landscape.
Pirate tales from the law
Arthur M. (Arthur Merton) Harris
Eighteenth-century pirates step out of romantic legend and into the harsh light of courtroom records, where sworn testimonies reveal their actual lives, petty squabbles, and eventual walk to the gallows.
The Survey, Volume 30, Number 3, Apr 19, 1913
Various
Across industrial mills, state legislatures, and public parks, early twentieth-century Americans confront the human costs of rapid economic expansion and social change.
Woman and Her Saviour in Persia: By a Returned Missionary
Thomas Laurie
A quiet account of female education and spiritual revival among 19th-century Persian Christians.
Expedition to discover the sources of the White Nile, in the years 1840, 1841, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Ferdinand Werne
An intrepid observer navigates the treacherous, shifting currents of the White Nile, capturing a vanishing world through the lens of a nineteenth-century European expedition. This record serves as a bridge to a frontier defined by both scientific curiosity and the brutal realities of imperial expansion.
Secret Diplomacy: How Far Can It Be Eliminated?
Paul S. (Paul Samuel) Reinsch
Can statecraft function without deception, or are international relations trapped in a perpetual loop of suspicion, armaments, and war?
The factory
Jonathan Thayer Lincoln
Before machine labor redefined human society, individual weavers sat in quiet cottages, laboring over manual looms to earn a meager living from hand-spun yarn.
White Slaves
Louis Albert Banks
The sight of a child forced into labor for a pittance is a moral wound that no society should ignore. This investigation into the dark corners of the city exposes the human cost behind the seams of our clothing.
The Next of Kin: Those who Wait and Wonder
Nellie L. McClung
This collection of essays and reflections captures the quiet, profound upheaval of the Canadian home front during the First World War. It is a meditation on resilience, written by a prominent activist who observed the changing roles and responsibilities of those left behind.
A Narrative of the Death of Captain James Cook
David Samwell
HOOK A firsthand account of the final days of a legendary explorer, written by a surgeon who stood on the beach and watched a peaceful visit collapse into violent, irreparable tragedy.
The Irish Constitution: Explained by Darrell Figgis
Darrell Figgis
This focused examination of the 1922 Irish Constitution offers a rare look at the high-stakes political architecture of a new nation. It clarifies the foundational principles and practical mechanics of the Irish Free State’s original legal framework.
The history of the 9th (Scottish) Division, 1914-1919
Ewing, John, M.C.
A rugged, detailed account of the 9th (Scottish) Division’s four-year ordeal, tracing a journey from Kitchener’s volunteer training camps to the final, tense occupation of the Rhine.
Our polar flight
Roald Amundsen
The silent, frozen expanse of the high Arctic offers no quarter to those who seek to conquer it by air. Driven by ambition and mechanical ingenuity, six men gamble their lives against the unforgiving ice of the North Pole.
The War and the Churches
Joseph McCabe
The world’s religious institutions stand condemned by their own history of silence and complicity regarding the persistent barbarism of war. This investigation argues that the Christian Church, despite its centuries of moral authority, has failed to act as a genuine barrier to the slaughter of nations.
War
Pierre Loti
The Great War is a visceral, haunting descent into the trenches of the Western Front, written by a witness who sees the conflict as a definitive, existential struggle between civilization and a uniquely modern, calculated barbarism.
Why Armenia Should Be Free: Armenia's Rôle in the Present War
Armen Garo
The struggle for Armenian independence during the First World War serves as a profound moral touchstone for the meaning of victory, justice, and the survival of small nations against imperial aggression.
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435: Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852
Various
In May 1852, a popular Scottish weekly gathers public controversies, social observations, personal memoirs, and literary portraits into an engaging snapshot of mid-nineteenth-century intellectual life.
The Coming of Evolution: The Story of a Great Revolution in Science
John W. (John Wesley) Judd
A magnificent revolution in human thought transformed our understanding of the natural world, replacing static creation theories with dynamic processes of gradual change and continuous modification over vast spans of geological time.
German Atrocities: An Official Investigation
J. H. (John Hartman) Morgan
A brutal war shatters human decency as strict legal analysis exposes calculated violence against civilians and captives across the Western Front.
The Argentine Republic
Anonymous
Written as a comprehensive souvenir volume for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, this official survey outlines the rapid modernization, vast natural resources, and growing geopolitical importance of early twentieth-century Argentina.
From Capetown to Ladysmith: An Unfinished Record of the South African War
G. W. (George Warrington) Steevens
A journalist travels to South Africa on the brink of conflict, recording a nation’s slide into open warfare with sharp observation and mounting dread.
Scapa and a Camera: Pictorial Impressions of Five Years Spent at the Grand Fleet Base
C. W. Burrows
The cold, mist-shrouded waters of the Orkney Islands served as the unlikely stage for one of history’s most significant naval vigils. This account captures the transformation of a sleepy northern anchorage into the heart of the Grand Fleet.
Isis very much unveiled, being the story of the great Mahatma hoax
Fydell Edmund Garrett
This investigation tracks the internal collapse of a high-profile mystical society, tracing how religious leaders used fraudulent "Mahatma" correspondence to control their followers and consolidate personal power.
The Winning of Popular Government: A Chronicle of the Union of 1841
Archibald MacMechan
The winning of popular government was a hard-fought evolution, transforming Canada from a fractured, rebellious collection of colonies into a self-governing, unified nation through the crucible of political strife and constitutional experiment.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 153, September 5, 1917
Various
This collection of British wartime wit offers a sharp, satirical window into the daily anxieties, absurdities, and domestic realities of life in 1917. It reveals the persistent human need for laughter as a buffer against the grim machinery of the Great War.
The great probability of a North West Passage: deduced from observations on the letter of Admiral de Fonte
Unknown
A determined geographer sifts through the remnants of an obscure Spanish expedition, building a rigorous case for the existence of a navigable route between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
The World in Chains: Some Aspects of War and Trade
John Mavrogordato
War is often framed as a clash of national ideals, but this analysis argues that its true engine is the cynical, borderless machinery of international trade and private profit.
The Arctic regions and the northern whale-fishery
William Scoresby
Exploring the frozen frontiers of the North, this account navigates the intersection of perilous whale-fishing, rigorous scientific observation, and the vast, unforgiving beauty of the Arctic wilderness.
With the Guns
Cecil J. C. (Cecil John Charles) Street
This firsthand account of British artillery operations during the Great War offers a rare, ground-level perspective on the technical, logistical, and profoundly human challenges faced by the men behind the guns. It captures the transition from the expectations of mobile warfare to the grinding reality of the…
Proceedings, Third National Conference Workmen's Compensation for Industrial Accidents
National Conference on Workmen's Compensation for Industrial Accidents
Industrial accidents were once a legal labyrinth where injured workers were often left with nothing; this record captures the intense, high-stakes debate of the reformers attempting to build a better system for the nation.
Observations on the slave trade and a description of some part of the coast of Guinea, during a voyage, made in 1787, and 1788, in company with Doctor A. Sparrman and Captain Arrehenius
Carl Bernhard Wadström
This urgent firsthand account serves as an early, impassioned indictment of the Atlantic slave trade. Written in the late eighteenth century, the work merges travelogue with political advocacy to expose the systemic brutality of human trafficking.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 152, March 14, 1917
Various
A sharp, satirical dispatch from the front lines of the British home front, this volume captures the absurdity and resilience of life during the Great War. It is a mosaic of wit that demands to be read not as a history, but as a living record of a nation laughing in the shadow of conflict.
Australasia Triumphant!: With the Australians and New Zealanders in the Great War on Land and Sea
Arthur St. John Adcock
A fierce rush of volunteer spirit transforms distant dominions into a unified imperial vanguard.
Peru in the Guano Age: Being a Short Account of a Recent Visit to the Guano Deposits, with Some Reflections on the Money They Have Produced and the Uses to Which It Has Been Applied
A. J. (Alexander James) Duffield
A mid-Victorian traveler examines the dizzying wealth and sudden decay of a South American nation that built its modern empire on bird droppings.
War Services of the 62nd West Riding Divisional Artillery
Austin Thomas Anderson
Under relentless artillery fire and knee-deep in mud, a division of British gunners turns raw discipline into survival, transforming from unproven recruits into a hardened engine that pushes through the Western Front’s darkest hours.
With Botha in the Field
Eric Moore Ritchie
Amid the backdrop of global conflict, a personal and logistical triumph unfolds across the sun-baked dust of Southern Africa.
Narrative of a Recent Imprisonment in China after the Wreck of the Kite
John Lee Scott
HOOK After the Kite founders in a violent sea, a young merchant sailor finds himself thrust into the heart of an impenetrable empire as a prisoner of war.
Standard Measures of United States, Great Britain and France: History and actual comparisons. With appendix on introduction of the mètre
Arthur S. C. Wurtele
Precise measurement is a deceptively simple endeavor, often obscured by conflicting scientific data and the stubborn reality that a standard is merely a metal bar kept in a vault.
Twelve months in Madagascar
Joseph Mullens
A firsthand account of a pivotal year in the nineteenth-century evolution of Madagascar, this chronicle documents the intersection of faith, colonial influence, and the rapid modernization of a nation at a crossroads.
What I Saw in Kaffir-Land
Stephen Lakeman
A soldier’s candid, often blunt, record of personal experience during the frontier wars in South Africa, this narrative blends gritty military observation with a restless, wandering spirit. It serves as a striking, unvarnished portrait of colonial life and conflict.
Boer War Lyrics
Louis Selmer
The struggle for justice against the weight of empire finds a raw, poetic voice in these verses, which confront the moral costs of the South African War.
Peacemakers—Blessed and Otherwise: Observations, Reflections and Irritations at an International Conference
Ida M. (Ida Minerva) Tarbell
The Washington Conference of 1921 serves as a high-stakes arena where the quest for global disarmament meets the stubborn, entrenched realities of human suspicion and international greed.
Thirty Canadian V.Cs., 23d April 1915 to 30th March 1918
Theodore Goodridge Roberts
These pages chronicle the extraordinary courage of thirty Canadian soldiers who received the Victoria Cross during the First World War. It serves as both a historical record and a tribute to individual sacrifice on the Western Front.
A Visit to Three Fronts: June 1916
Arthur Conan Doyle
This firsthand account provides a somber, intimate perspective on the Western and Italian fronts during the height of the First World War. It serves as a vital historical record of the mechanical and human scale of total war.
Sea Warfare
Rudyard Kipling
Cold North Sea spray, rusted hulls, and the quiet, deadly routine of the men who keep the ocean lanes open form the heart of this portrait of naval endurance during the First World War.