Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life (Paperback)

~ James H. Jones (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

A fascinating account of a fantastic American. -- The New Republic

A masterly, disturbing biography. -- Washington Post Book World

Product Description

The definitive biography of Alfred C. Kinsey—the man who inspired the major new motion picture starring Liam Neeson.

More than twenty-five years in the making, this groundbreaking biography caused great controversy when it was first published. Drawing on tens of thousands of letters gleaned from more than a dozen archives and scores of personal interviews (ranging from members of sexual subcultures who demanded anonymity to congressmen, university presidents, prize-winning scientists, and heads of foundations), James H. Jones shows that the image of disinterested biologist cultivated by Kinsey was in fact a carefully crafted public persona. The Alfred C. Kinsey who emerges in these pages was a social reformer and a zealot, who devoted his every waking hour to the destruction of sexual repression. 31 b/w photographs.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 938 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (November 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393327248
• ISBN-13: 978-0393327243
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #138,858 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kinsey As Lucifer -- Well Worth The Effort, December 13, 2004

By	Marc Demarest "Marc Demarest" (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.