Explore Henry A. Kissinger’s undergraduate thesis — “The Meaning of History: Reflections on Spengler, Toynbee, and Kant” — alongside a generated mindmap, a structured outline, and a concise summary. A polished landing page ties everything together.

• Live Site: dicklesworthstone.github.io/kissinger_undergraduate_thesis
• Read Thesis (HTML): kissinger_thesis.html
• Thesis (EPUB): kissinger_thesis.epub
• Thesis (Kindle AZW3): kissinger_thesis.azw3
• Thesis (MOBI): kissinger_thesis.mobi
• Mindmap (HTML): view mindmap
• Mindmap Outline (HTML): reader view
• Summary (HTML): reader view
• Markdown sources: Thesis (MD) • Outline (MD) • Summary (MD)
• Repository: github.com/Dicklesworthstone/kissinger_undergraduate_thesis

• index.html: Landing page using Tailwind (CDN) with quick links to all artifacts and inline SVG icons (no icon font).
• docs/kissinger_thesis.md: Improved, authoritative Markdown version of the thesis.
• docs/kissinger_thesis.html: Reader that auto-renders docs/kissinger_thesis.md client‑side (Tailwind Typography, dark mode, code highlight, inline SVG icons, “Aa” reader controls for font + width/family — Inter/Literata/Newsreader).
• henry_a_kissinger_the_meaning_of_history_reflections_on_spengler_toynbee_and_kant_0aa02530_pdf_mindmap.html: Mindmap visualization (HTML).
• henry_a_kissinger_the_meaning_of_history_reflections_on_spengler_toynbee_and_kant_0aa02530_pdf_mindmap_outline.html: Reader that renders the Outline Markdown in the same reader view.
• henry_a_kissinger_the_meaning_of_history_reflections_on_spengler_toynbee_and_kant_0aa02530_pdf_summary.html: Reader that renders the Summary Markdown in the same reader view.
• Markdown originals of the outline and summary remain in the repo alongside the readers.
• assets/: Self‑hosted social preview images (og.jpg, og.webp), PWA icons (android-chrome-*.png, apple-touch-icon.png).
• site.webmanifest, safari-pinned-tab.svg, favicon.svg: App metadata and icons.

• Visit the live site above and use the cards/buttons.
• Thesis (HTML): docs/kissinger_thesis.html automatically fetches and renders docs/kissinger_thesis.md. Edit the Markdown and refresh the page.
• Outline (HTML): ..._mindmap_outline.html auto‑renders the root ..._mindmap_outline.md (with GitHub raw fallback).
• Summary (HTML): ..._summary.html auto‑renders the root ..._summary.md (with GitHub raw fallback).
• Reader controls: Click “Aa” in the reader header to adjust font family (Inter/Literata/Newsreader), font size, and reading width. Theme toggle is next to it.
• Markdown resources open on GitHub’s blob pages so they render nicely.

• Beautiful typography via Tailwind Typography; light/dark modes; sticky header.
• “Aa” reader controls: font family (Inter/Literata/Newsreader), font size, reading width; preferences persist.
• Right‑rail Table of Contents with scrollspy highlighting current section.
• Accessible patterns: skip link, high‑contrast focus states, reduced‑motion support.

These artifacts were prepared by Jeffrey Emanuel:

• Mindmap and Summary were generated using FixMyDocuments.
• You can also reproduce a similar mindmap locally using the open‑source tool: mindmap‑generator.

Quick options:

• Fastest path: Upload the thesis (or any document) to FixMyDocuments and select the Mindmap and Summary options to generate both artifacts in one go.
• Open‑source path: Clone mindmap‑generator, follow its README to install dependencies, and run it against your source document to export a mindmap (and outline if supported).

This repo is ready for GitHub Pages in either configuration:

• Root mode: Serve from main branch, root folder.
• Docs mode: Serve from main branch, /docs folder.

Included for convenience:

• .nojekyll at root and in docs/ to bypass Jekyll processing.
• docs/ contains mirrored copies of the landing page, reader(s), Markdown, and assets so either Pages mode works.

If you edit the landing page or HTML locally and you are using Docs mode, mirror your changes:

cp -f index.html docs/index.html
cp -f kissinger_thesis.html docs/
cp -fr assets docs/
cp -f henry_*_pdf_*.html docs/

Because the reader fetches docs/kissinger_thesis.md, preview with a local server (to avoid browser file:// fetch restrictions):

python3 -m http.server 8000
# then open:
# http://localhost:8000/kissinger_thesis.html
# http://localhost:8000/henry_a_kissinger_the_meaning_of_history_reflections_on_spengler_toynbee_and_kant_0aa02530_pdf_mindmap_outline.html
# http://localhost:8000/henry_a_kissinger_the_meaning_of_history_reflections_on_spengler_toynbee_and_kant_0aa02530_pdf_summary.html

• Tailwind (CDN) + Typography plugin; inline SVG icons (no icon font).
• Reader uses markdown‑it (+ footnotes plugin) + DOMPurify and highlight.js.
• Self‑hosted OG image and PWA icons; site.webmanifest configured.
• Everything is static; for the reader, use a local server when previewing.

• Branding: Edit colors in index.html Tailwind config (the brand palette) and meta theme color.
• Social preview: Replace assets/og.jpg/assets/og.webp and update og:image tags in index.html.
• Favicon/pinned tab: Update favicon.svg and safari-pinned-tab.svg; PWA icons live in assets/.
• Reader defaults: Change default font family/size/width in kissinger_thesis.html (CSS vars and localStorage keys reader:ff, reader:font, reader:width).

To swap in a new thesis (or any document):

• Replace docs/kissinger_thesis.md with your new Markdown.
• The reader (kissinger_thesis.html) will render the new content automatically.
• Optional: Update the on‑page title by editing the Markdown’s first # H1 — the reader sets the page title from it.

• Keyboard navigation and visible focus states across interactive elements.
• Skip link to jump straight to content.
• Reduced‑motion friendly: animations respect prefers-reduced-motion.
• High‑contrast palettes in light/dark themes.

These artifacts were prepared by Jeffrey Emanuel:

• Mindmap and Summary were generated using FixMyDocuments.
• You can also reproduce a similar mindmap locally using the open‑source tool: mindmap‑generator.

Quick options:

• Fastest path: Upload the thesis (or any document) to FixMyDocuments and select the Mindmap and Summary options to generate both artifacts in one go.
• Open‑source path: Clone mindmap‑generator, follow its README to install dependencies, and run it against your source document to export a mindmap (and outline if supported).

• GitHub Pages caches for ~10 minutes; changes may take a short time to appear.
• When opening files locally (not via Pages), use a local server to avoid browser fetch restrictions.

Why this exists and how it was made, in the creator’s words:

"I wanted to read Henry Kissinger’s 400 page undergraduate thesis (it has an incredible first page), but really didn’t feel like dealing with a scanned PDF that’s annoying to read on a phone without constantly zooming and panning.

So I decided to convert it to a nice markdown format using OCR and LLMs. Then I thought it would be nice to fix the footnotes and get rid of the page breaks and to fix the line breaks and other things like that.

I was already working on some other coding projects, so I had the idea of loading up the draft markdown file in Claude Code and having it work on fixing these issues using a swarm of 20 sub-agents, which worked well.

Then I thought it would be cool to link to the full sources for all the many references on sites like the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg, so I had another swarm of sub-agents do a ton of searches to track the links down and insert them into the footnotes and bibliography.

Then I figured that I might as well run it through my mind-map generator and summarization code to see what it comes up with, so I tried that. But now I had a few files to present, so needed some kind of index page.

So I asked Codex with GPT-5 to whip up a slick looking web page to present the stuff nicely, which it did a yeoman’s job with.

Note that I was already working with these tools in a bunch of other sessions on other projects, so my work here was occasionally giving some instructions to the coding agents and letting them crank away. I really didn’t spend much active time on this!

Anyway, the net result is clearly the premier way in the world today to consume Henry Kissinger’s undergraduate thesis electronically. I’ll post the link in the next tweet to avoid getting punished by the algorithm.

As for the thesis itself, it’s wild how erudite he was as a young man, and also what a great writer he was. And even more impressive considering that English was his second language.

The thesis is basically him trying to come to grips with, and to mentally organize in an internally consistent way, a vast swath of Western thought. From what I’ve read so far, I think he did a pretty good job.

Incidentally, his thesis is the reason Harvard changed the rules to limit the undergrad honors thesis to a maximum of 35,000 words. Good thing they didn’t apply this silly limit to Henry!" This repository presents a readable edition of Kissinger’s undergraduate thesis, with additional generated materials (mindmap, outline, summary) to aid exploration and study.