Alfred C. Kinsey : A Public/Private Life

For my rather long original review, complete with mildly disturbing humor, (horror?), see the comments section below. Otherwise, here is my shorter but perspective-filled review.

From what I understand of his work, I wouldn’t really trust the Kinsey Reports to do what they are billed as doing. Kinsey was too bent on clobbering you with data and too bitterly anti-Victorian in a scientific sense to see value in the non-mathematical, even for sex. This doesn’t mean for me that sex research has no place, only that it cannot willfully dismiss all restraint with contempt as lack of toleration.

However, I don’t think Kinsey was a stupid or unsympathetic man, and the story of his journey through the post-Victorian period is worth knowing show more about. I too, in my life, have been exposed to fearful Victorianism and responded with bitter anti-Victorianism, and I know that this cycle is part of many people’s stories. Perhaps it is a story that needs to be told. At any rate, I know that if I have been given the grace to go beyond what I was before, still it is but for the grace of God that I do not walk another path, to which ill fortune in another world might have confined me. Certainly I know now that I am not alone, and I would that the Kinseys of the world to know that they have never been alone. show less

A great biography of an almost legendary personality. This books tries (sometimes too delicately) to capture the name behind the landmark text in human sexuality and succeeds. While at times it seems like too much emphasis is placed on justifying his research and his choices, the reader will find a rich and accessible history here.

A deeply flawed biography of Kinsey and critique of his "flawed" work. For a detailed ciritique of this biography, see Sex: The Measure of All Things.

Fascinating biography of the author of the Kinsey Report and other looks into the sex life of the average (or not so average) American.