Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life

Alfred Kinsey is a hero to everyone who believes in what Kinsey called sexual variation -- the notion that sexuality is deep, broad, somewhat ungovernable, highly individualized, difficult to judge and a fundamental expression of one's self. For these folks, Kinsey outed all of us (and high time, too), opening a healthy and necessary global discussion on sexual preference, choice and predilection. Equally, Kinsey is a demon to everyone who believes that the phrase "sexual deviant" means something, and who subscribes to the notion that, somewhere in the 1950s, US culture lost its way in a maze of permissiveness and perversion. For thse folks, that maze was designed in large measure by Kinsey. Kinsey's devotees will find this biography unsettling. Jones gives us a wonderfully rich and detailed view of just how deeply Kinsey's own needs (and blindnesses) informed his work and the work of his team, and how (consciously or otherwise) Kinsey's quest for self-validation led him to concoct (no other word will do, it seems to me) validation for all those like him who could not find their sexual self-images in the rather poverty-stricken catalog available in the 1950s and before. Kinsey-haters, while clapping gleefully at all that Jones reveals about the flaws behind Kinsey's path-breaking work (Mister Y in particular), will also be disturbed by this book. Jones doesn't demonize Kinsey, or, if he does, he makes of Kinsey a Lucifer: a bringer of light, an arrogant, fallen angel, a friend of humankind. It is impossible, it seems to me, to read this truly great book and not conclude that, flawed and conflicted as he was, Kinsey was doing the work of the angels -- that his research did open, in an unforecloseable way, the facticity of sexual variation in the human species. For historians and sociologists of science, this book is a must-read: a wonderful case study about the open boundary between the psyche of the investigator and the subject of investigation. For the rest of us, this is the biography of a man, in full: a big, brilliant [...], dead-on and dead-broken at the same moment. It's nice -- in these days of perpetu-spin, Fox News and reality TV -- to see something whole, to see it clearly, and to see it without the annoying drone of (leftist or rightist) commentary. All kudos to Jones for his fairness, his scholarship and his reach, which does not exceed his grasp.

i had not known too much about kinsey until i read this book . . . now i know perhaps even more than i watnted to know (the book is nearly 1,000 pages). . . however, it was never dull . . . and would be of interest to readers interested in books about higher education, the mdeia, public rleations, statistics, politics, and yes, sex also! . . . i recommend the book!

I bought this book on the strength of Richard Rhodes' review in the New York Times. Clearly, Kinsey was one of the key figures in biology and psychology during our century. Jones' book is a clearly written and well-documented journey through the whole of Kinsey's life, and provides a unique insight into the boy who was father to the man. However, I found Jones' book slow going at first. The amount of material in the text seemed to be proportional to the research materials available, and not to its importance. The section detailing Kinsey's college years was particularly difficult for me. My interest, and the pace of the book, picked up rapidly once Kinsey arrived at Indiana University. I agree with Rhodes that the book improves as it moves along. Jones states his basic premises about Kinsey's life right up front, and upon first being confronted with his descriptions of Kinsey's sadomasochistic and voyeuristic sexual practices my first reaction was, "Aww, c'mon". However, by the end of the book, his interpretations were so well-argued and well-documented that I had no choice but to agree with Jones' conclusions about Kinsey the man as well as Kinsey the researcher. The most fascinating aspect of the book was Jones' insight into the culture of science in pre-World War II America. He never allows this to dominate the text, but it is an important subtext throughout. Overall, this is the best book I've read on the history of science since Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb. In my opinion, Kinsey was to human psychology what Oppenheimer was to physics: a man, deeply-flawed as all of us are, thrust by history into unusual circumstances who ultimately changes the world around him.