Alfred C. Kinsey : A Public/Private Life - Hardcover

Jones, James H.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393040860 ISBN 13: 9780393040869

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997

Synopsis

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

About this title

Review:

This astonishing biography of Alfred Kinsey, the man who launched the sexual revolution, is graphically frank about his decidedly out-of-the-mainstream sexual practices (including masochism and voyeurism), yet historian James Jones doesn't exploit the material for titillation. Instead, Jones argues compassionately and persuasively that Kinsey's personal sexual demons sparked his campaign to demolish Victorian taboos about sex by gathering the scientific data eventually published in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). Jones reveals that the data were hardly as unbiased as Kinsey claimed, but it was world-shaking nonetheless. Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life is a magnificent work of cultural history as well as a sensitive study of a troubled individual.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0393040860
• ISBN 13: 9780393040869
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 938