Free summaries
History — page 2
59 public-domain history books, summarised. Page 2 of 2.
The Trent affair
Thomas L. (Thomas LeGrand) Harris
In 1861, a single impulsive naval act nearly ignited a war between the United States and Great Britain, threatening to shatter the Union while it struggled to survive its own internal rebellion.
Tropical Africa
Henry Drummond
Dense forests, quiet lakes, and a continent in transition unfold through the eyes of a Victorian scientist who observes both the wonders of natural adaptation and the devastation of the Arab slave trade with quiet, measured intensity.
Natural history, lore and legend
F. Edward (Frederick Edward) Hulme
A wide-eyed trek through old bestiaries, travelogues, and folklore exposes how our ancestors mapped their world using equal parts keen observation, pious moralizing, and wild imagination.
Facts you should know about the classics
Joseph McCabe
A brief, illuminating tour of world literature, this guide distills three millennia of writing into a practical survey of the thinkers and poets whose works have earned enduring status.
What they said about the Fourth Armored Division
United States. Army. Armored Division, 4th
This collection of dispatches captures the raw, kinetic energy of the Fourth Armored Division, detailing its relentless spearheading role in the liberation of Europe and the final collapse of the German Reich.
Books in general
Squire, John Collings, Sir
A relaxed room full of old volumes becomes a mirror for human nature in all its vanity, humor, and unpredictable charm.
The Swedes on the Delaware, 1638-1664
Amandus Johnson
Out on the wilderness edge of North America, seventeenth-century Sweden attempted to carve an empire from the forest, only to discover how quickly balance sheets, shipwrecks, and geopolitical reality transform ambition into survival.
The loyal mountaineers of Tennessee
Thomas William Humes
Isolated by geography and ideology, the Unionist residents of East Tennessee faced a brutal internal war while maintaining a defiant, clandestine loyalty to the United States throughout the American Civil War.
The Mercantile Marine
E. Keble (Edward Keble) Chatterton
To understand the story of the sea is to recognize that the strength of a nation rests not on its warships, but on the enduring enterprise of its merchant sailors. This history traces the evolution of the Mercantile Marine from ancient Mediterranean trade to the dawn of the modern liner.
A brief history of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Punjab Regiment : formerly: 76th Punjabis
Anonymous
Raised during the eighteen-century struggle for the Indian peninsula, a single regiment marches across a century and a half of imperial expansion, desert warfare, and catastrophic siege, bound together by discipline and shared endurance.
Futility
William Alexander Gerhardie
An absurd, aimless war sweeps across a collapsing empire, but one hapless family is far too busy with its own exquisite, self-inflicted domestic entanglements to notice.