The True Story of a Government-Ordered Bookburning in America
The Books & Journals of Research-Physician Wilhelm Reich
Friday, Sept. 26 – 6:30 till 8:00 p.m.
Takoma Park Community Center auditorium
7500 Maple Avenue, Takoma Park, Maryland.
Saturday, Sept. 27 – noon till 2:00 p.m.
Jefferson Market Library
10th Street & Avenue of the Americas
New York City
In the 1930s, Wilhelm Reich—an Austrian research-physician, scientist and prominent anti-Nazi—arrived in America, four days before the outbreak of World War Two. In the 1940s, he established a laboratory and research center, first in New York and later in Rangeley, Maine. In the 1950s, his books and published research journals were banned and burned by order of a United States Federal Court.
How could such a thing happen? What was in Reich’s published books and research journals that “merited” their actual destruction?
Learn more about this fascinating chapter of American censorship history which will be presented by filmmaker and professor Kevin Hinchey and History of Science Professor James E. Strick, Ph.D. This presentation coincides with the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week.
Kevin Hinchey is one of the directors of the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust, which operates the Wilhelm Reich Museum, administers Reich’s archives at the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and works with New York publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux to publish Reich’s books. Mr. Hinchey is currently preparing a full-length documentary film about Reich.
James Strick is a published science historian and professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. His upcoming book about Reich’s biological research will be published by
Harvard University Press in Spring 2015 under the title Wilhelm Reich, Biologist. Professor Strick is also a principal consultant on the documentary film project.
