Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life
by James H. Jones
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Book Summary Information
Author: James H. JonesEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-11
ISBN: 0393327248
Number of pages: 938
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Book Reviews of Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life
Book Review: Kinsey As Lucifer -- Well Worth The Effort
Summary: 5 Stars
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.
Summary of Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life
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
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