Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Kindle
$9.99

Available instantly

Hardcover
$22.50

Paperback
$17.05

List Price: $17.95 Details

Save: $0.90 (5%)

Get Fast, Free Shipping with Amazon Prime FREE Returns

FREE delivery Monday, March 25 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35. Order within 8 hrs 4 mins

Select delivery location

In Stock

$$17.05 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Ships from

Amazon.com

Ships from

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Sold by

Amazon.com

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

Returns

Eligible for Return, Refund or Replacement within 30 days of receipt

This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.

Read full return policy

Payment

Secure transaction

Payment

Secure transaction

We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more

Details

Add a gift receipt for easy returns

$3.99 delivery March 27 - April 2. Details

Or fastest delivery March 25 - 28. Details

Select delivery location

Used: Very Good | Details

Sold by Half Price Books Inc

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Other Sellers on Amazon

Added

Not added

$14.54
+ $3.99 shipping

Sold by: indoobestsellers

Follow the author

James H. Jones

Follow

Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life Paperback – November 17, 2004

by James H. Jones (Author)

4.4 32 ratings

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$17.05","priceAmount":17.05,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"17","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"05","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"8Bdx%2BkapG%2Brdhw3L96EcH7ZFR7pfZrq61PDelX6aGS075Fi7GXuAazK4JxCiUrZqcTXTbtVmMEwmugNlTewioY9JjQVlE3QMZ7yS6TxTMZrJSJ8o%2FO7WdLwLjqcxbBs9cBkdUBgXSc4%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$3.61","priceAmount":3.61,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"3","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"61","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"8Bdx%2BkapG%2Brdhw3L96EcH7ZFR7pfZrq60Ykc%2FqC3dT5GOcHprvaAT3k394kTBXIOPQsgI2a3RkoaN0x0QPENOlfY7OX7UWpJRcduKjON5xO%2Btq3Tn4PG11994uutdvmaM%2FP9dSY8I7ER4k3f3OEu7SvjFeVpBu95F0v3rkjOwDWq6m6j2grU6aNiIivEExKE","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

The hidden life of Alfred C. Kinsey, the principal architect of the sexual revolution.

In this brilliant, groundbreaking biography, twenty years in the making, James H. Jones presents a moving and even shocking portrait of the man who pierced the veil of reticence surrounding human sexuality. Jones shows that the public image Alfred Kinsey cultivated of disinterested biologist was in fact a carefully crafted public persona. By any measure he was an extraordinary man―and a man with secrets.

Drawing upon never before disclosed facts about Kinsey's childhood, Jones traces the roots of Kinsey's scholarly interest in human sexuality to his tortured upbringing. Between the sexual tensions of the culture and Kinsey's devoutly religious family, Jones depicts Kinsey emerging from childhood with psychological trauma but determined to rescue humanity from the emotional and sexual repression he had suffered. New facts about his marriage, family life, and relationships with students and colleagues enrich this portrait of the complicated, troubled man who transformed the state of public discourse on human sexuality. 30 black-and-white photographs

Print length

938 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

November 17, 2004
Dimensions

5.5 x 1.4 x 8.3 inches
ISBN-10

0393327248
ISBN-13

978-0393327243
See all details

Ph D Judith Reisman
27
Paperback
23 offers from $12.34
Judith Reisman
22
Paperback
5 offers from $91.53

Editorial Reviews

Review

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

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

About the Author

James H. Jones is the award-winning author of Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment and Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life. An independent scholar, he lives in San Francisco, California.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (November 17, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 938 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393327248
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393327243
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.79 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.4 x 8.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #692,442 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #772 in Psychology & Counseling Books on Sexuality
- #1,481 in Scientist Biographies
- #2,175 in Sex & Sexuality

Customer Reviews:
4.4 32 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

James H. Jones

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

32 global ratings

2 star

0%

1 star

3%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

LkyleHolland

Helped explain the last 70 years of sexual transition to me!

Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2019

Verified Purchase

This book was extremely helpful in helping me to understand how we got to the place of sexual confusion that we have today. Alfred Kinsey was a deeply troubled man in deep sexual confusion and bondage. It’s tragic that this was not known until 25 years after his death and immense influence. He needs to be held accountable for his crimes against children and society. His Institute and the University of Indiana need to give an account.

14 people found this helpful

Helpful

Gerald C. McLain

I purchased this book looking for information on this man ...

Reviewed in the United States on August 22, 2014

Verified Purchase

I purchased this book looking for information on this man named Kinsey. I got so much information I am sick. If half of what I read in here is true, Kinsey's adult life was one big orgy. Now every time I read a "scientific" journal that cites his name I cringe. How do I erase the memory he'd let his wife sleep with his assistant because he wanted to sleep with his assistant. They called this sexual research, a science. I equate his research to the level of what the Nazi's did in the prison camps. Not fit for use in realm of science. Thanks for doing the leg work here.

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

A Better Title Would Be "Alfred Kinsey: A Portrait of Banal Evil"

Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2022

Verified Purchase

As I learn more and more about Alfred Kinsey from various sources, the depth of his evil becomes more evident. Even a brief glimpse into Kinsey's methodology, mindset, associations with pedophiles, biases, pseudoscience, and erroneous conclusions is a terrible tumble into a deep, dark pit which is scarring just to consider. A life of evil, evilly led.

5 people found this helpful

Helpful

Lady Lisa

While the book didn't necessarily make me like Alfred Kinsey as a person

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2014

Verified Purchase

After watching the movie "Kinsey" I wanted to know more about Mr. Kinsey, the man who exposed the hidden sexual behaviors of many Americans in a time when nobody talked publicly about sex. While the book didn't necessarily make me like Alfred Kinsey as a person, I finished it with admiration for a man whose singular mission was to enlighten the average person about sex during a time when there was a lot of mystery and secrecy about it, and made information and knowledge about it accessible for everyone.

3 people found this helpful

Helpful

Joey E. Boyum

Apologist for a degenerate.

Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2014

Verified Purchase

Glad the author saw fit to tell a true and complete tale of this fraud. Kinsey gave a pseudo scientific veneer to the beliefs and degenerate sexual practices of such men as Havelock Ellis and John Addington Symonds.

Kinsey's mechanism of suicide was truly comic. The fact that man that suspended himself by his testicles until he suffered terminal harm, yet is regarded as the ultimate moral authority for sex and sexualism means there is a SERIOUS disconnect between what people believe to be true and what is actually true regarding sex and acceptable sexual practices in america.

That he was a predatory homosexual who demanded sexual favors from his graduate students pretty much sums up his character.

15 people found this helpful

Helpful

David

Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life

Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2012

Verified Purchase

I haven't had a chance to read the book yet but I'm sure it's an excellent book it came on time and in excellent condition

Helpful

Marc Demarest

Kinsey As Lucifer -- Well Worth The Effort

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2004

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.

60 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Max

Fascinating author.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2023

Verified Purchase

Very good excellent condition.a good purchase

angel bofarull

great book

Reviewed in France on August 19, 2020

Verified Purchase

kinsey the prophet,the man who has done a good work to erradicate puritanism and hipocrisy

Dr. Richard Brown

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on September 19, 2016

Verified Purchase

a very good read

See more reviews

Return this item for free