Customer Reviews

Alfred C. Kinsey : A Public/Private Life

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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.

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!

James Jones's biography of Alfred c Kinsey is a valuable antidote to the hagiographies and demonologies published so far. Jones presents the nastier sides of his subject's personality and exposes his strategically concealed sexual practices. However, Jones presents Kinsey as a pervert and charlatan, failing to understand the moral and scientific rationales for Kinsey's approach to sex research and thus totally misrepresents both the man and his achievement. Jones's last-page sop to Kinsey's greatness seems to be a cowardly after-thought to a bilious, splenetic and angry book.

Jones certainly did his homework, but the work comes across as mean, even vindictive. He shows Kinsey is the harshest light and he comes across as excessively judgmental. A more recent book, Sex - the Measure of All Things by Jonathan Gathorne Hardy is a kindler and more balanced look at Kinsey and his work. I recommend starting with that. Kinsey was a great pioneer -- not perfect -- but a true giant in opening up to the doors to our sexuality. The Christian right has spent the last thirty years trying to discredit Kinsey's work and take us back to the 19th Century.

"Awkward" and "provincial" wrote the NY Times reviewer, and I can't disagree. To get an idea of the biographer's perspective on Kinsey, consider that he refers to an interest in S/M as "peculiar," and closes by predicting that had the atheistic Kinsey lived to see the age of AIDS, he would have seen AIDS as the work of a "wrathful God."

This book is based on a little research and a large amount of opinion (too much). Opinions are nice, but they should never be presented as fact. This is way too far fetched. Go ahead and read this but only if you like a good fiction novel. 900+ pages of crap.