Richard Koenigsberg and Mei Ha Chan in front of my apartment at 16 West 95th Street, Manhattan—Library of Social Science's first home. Vamik Volkan & Richard Koenigsberg at a meeting of the ISPP (International Society for Political Psychology).

Library of Social Science was a Book Exhibit Management Company— and is a scholarly research institute exploring sources and meanings of collective forms of violence.’

It began with a meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology in Secaucus, NJ, July 1988. The mission of studying collective forms of violence—and of organizing book exhibits were united at the beginning.

Library of Social Science was founded in April 1975 with the publication of Hitler’s Ideology (click through the link for information on how to purchase the e-book). One thousand hardbound copies (with a nice dust jacket) were delivered to my one-bedroom apartment on West 95th Street. From this point forward—having abandoned “jobs”—I was on my own, a complete unknown.

I focused my energies on selling my book and was successful at getting Hitler’s Ideology into the hands of important scholars in the field. Marketing the book was all I did for a year. I turned my book into a best-seller in the college library market.

Eleven years after the publication of Hitler’s Ideology (having had no contact with the academic world during that time), I received a letter from an Israeli psychoanalyst and writer (Avner Falk) who had read Hitler's Ideology as well as my second book The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism--and invited me to participate in a panel at the International Society of Political Psychology.

I had never attended an academic conference before but I said, what the hell—let’s give it a shot. To my surprise, Falk joined me up with Dr. Vamik Volkan, the most prominent political psychologist in the world (subsequently nominated four times for the Nobel Peace Prize).

The International Society of Political Psychology was founded in 1978 by Jeanne N. Knutson of the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA. After her death in 1981, Denis Snook (a student of Knutson’s with a PhD in Political Science) served as Conference Director.

Denis organized a little book exhibit for the 1988 ISPP conference (as he had at previous ISPP meetings) and invited me to participate. I said, what the hell—let’s give it a shot. I brought Hitler's Ideology The Psychoanalysis of Racism, Revolution and Nationalism--as well as some other titles I’d been selling to libraries and with my partner, Mei Ha Chan, set up two tables of books (perhaps 25 titles).

So there I was at last, returning to the academic world after all those years wandering around Manhattan: uniting my skills as a salesman (creating a book exhibit) and a social scientist (giving a presentation). This event marked my return to “civilization”—the beginning of the end of the “Nights on Broadway.”