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Graham Essays

A comprehensive digital archive of Paul Graham's influential writings, optimized for offline reading in EPUB and Markdown

Featured on Hacker News front page at launch, check on GitHub for more details.

Overview

This project automatically downloads, processes, and formats the complete collection of essays from Paul Graham's website into convenient digital formats. What started as a simple web scraping exercise turned into a substantial digital library containing over 200 essays and more than 500,000 words of influential writing on startups, technology, and entrepreneurship.

Key Features

  • Complete & Current: The entire collection is automatically rebuilt and updated daily via GitHub Actions. This project was featured on the Hacker News front page and has received over 800 GitHub stars.
  • Multiple Formats: Available in both EPUB (for e-readers) and Markdown (for developers/note-takers).
  • Optimized for Reading: Clean, well-formatted text for a high-quality reading experience on any device.
  • Offline Access: Download once, read anywhere without an internet connection.
  • Open Source: Full source code is available for transparency and community-driven development.

Technical Implementation

The project leverages the RSS feed originally created by Aaron Swartz and officially shared by Paul Graham himself, ensuring legitimate access. The automation pipeline uses several Python libraries for clean, readable output:

  • feedparser - Parses the RSS feed to retrieve essay metadata
  • html2text - Converts HTML content to a clean Markdown format
  • htmldate - Accurately extracts publication dates from web pages
  • Unidecode - Handles character encoding for consistent text formatting

Getting Started

Quick Start

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ofou/graham-essays.git
cd graham-essays
make

This generates fresh EPUB and Markdown files with the latest essays.

Downloads

Ready-to-use files (updated daily via GitHub Actions):

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's code improvements, format suggestions, or feature requests:

  • Open an issue for bug reports or feature requests
  • Submit a pull request for code improvements
  • Share feedback on the reading experience

The goal is to make Paul Graham's essays as accessible as possible while maintaining the highest quality reading experience.

This is an independent project created for educational and personal use. All essay content remains the intellectual property of Paul Graham.