After serving in the
U.S. Marines during World War II Nebenzahl attended
Columbia University and then worked as a salesman for the Paul Masson Winery in Ohio and New Orleans. He married Jocelyn (Jossy) Spitz in 1953. The couple moved to
Chicago and established ‘Kenneth Nebenzahl, Inc.' as an antiquarian book company specializing in rare maps. His catalogs were titled
Compass for Map Collectors and
The Print Collector. He also worked with libraries to develop map collections, notably the
Newberry Library in Chicago. Nebenzahl served on the boards of the Newberry Library, the
University of Chicago, the
Adler Planetarium, and the
Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America. He was a charter member of the Chicago Map Society. He served on the Steering Committee of the Philip Lee Phillips Map Society of
Library of Congress which supports the mission of the Geography and Map Division. He served on the board of
Imago Mundi: International Journal for the History of Cartography, from 1978-2020. ==Nebenzahl Lectures==