Kaplan IV, 2005

Huck

Stuart:: The first game I created was called "Student Survival" which I published during the Vietnam War in the early '60s under a company I started called Gamemasters. In 1965, John Wiley published my first book, Mining, Minerals & Geosciences: A Worldwide Source Directory, which won a Library Journal Award. My career as a games publisher began in earnest in 1968. While working on Wall St., on a whim, I visited the Nuremberg Toy Fair in Germany and found a tarot deck with artwork that intrigued me and I brought back a sample. Henry Levy, a buyer at Brentanos in New York, placed a small order for the deck and I started printing and importing them from Switzerland. Because a booklet of instructions was required, I researched tarot which led to my writing the first of my five books on tarot cards, including the three volumes of The Encyclopedia of Tarot which describe and illustrate more than 1,000 different tarot decks from the 15th century to the present. These five books to date have sold over one million copies.

Volume IV of The Encyclopedia of Tarot will be published in Summer 2005 and features another 850 tarot decks not included in the previous volumes.

When I realized the potential for tarot, I decided to leave Wall St. and start the business full time under the name U.S. Games Systems. It was always my desire to be a writer. There is something about the perpetuity of books that has always fascinated me. I own books from the 18th and 19th centuries and after reading them I feel like I personally know the authors. I lived in Paris on the Left Bank for one year while attending the Sorbonne University and before going to the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where I graduated in 1955. Thus I have been fortunate to combine writing with a business career."

http://www.usgamesinc.com/newstore/pages.php?page=news/gamesquarterly_2004.html