Jones - Alfred C. Kinsey

More praise for James H. Joness Alfred C. Kinsey

Jones has written an astonishing, scrupulously researched and utterly uninhibited life of the almost legendary sexologist Alfred Kinsey, who poured his life into his work and made his science serve his appetites. Without aiming to be sensational, this is a sensational book.

Peter Gay, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University

[Jones] is a historian with a knack for writing books about the past that are bound to be discussed in the present.

Alan Wolfe, The New Republic

Jones does full justice to the complex and ambiguous character of his subject.

Nature

Joness biography of Alfred Kinsey is a tour de force. It sheds light not only on his extraordinary career but also on the evolution of sex research, sexual mores, higher education, and the role of philanthropic foundations in American society. What is equally impressive is that Jones has managed to integrate Kinseys personal life and scientific career without either denigrating or exalting him. This book will be the definitive work on Kinsey.

Gerald N. Grob, Henry E. Sigerist Professor of the History of Medicine, Rutgers University

It is hard to imagine any future Kinsey books trumping this one for sheer wealth of material.

Houston Chronicle

[An] impressive work. Thanks to James H. Jones, we now have a study of the man that shares the courageous spirit of openness and honesty that distinguishes the original Kinsey Reports.

Baltimore Sun

Joness Alfred C. Kinsey is a superb book, magnificently researched, and skillful in setting Kinsey within a number of broader social and intellectual contexts. Jones is a sensitive biographer, managing to draw a portraitwarts and allthat conveys the many striking strengths of this stubborn, driven, idealistic man, and showing that Kinseys public and private lives were inextricably interrelated. The book reads well and the cast of characters is fascinating.

James T. Patterson,
Ford Foundation Professor of History, Brown University

[A] magisterial account of a driven man and the repressed culture in which he had to work.

Independent on Sunday (London)

Jones has given us Kinsey with the brutal honesty of a devoted craftsman/writer and the nuanced humanity of a dedicated historian. This book is historical love-making at its finest, a page turner, and a compassionate tour de force on the pain of twentieth-century masculinity, prudery, and their institutional power components. If Kinsey hoped his prodigious research and dogged analysis would change how we think about sex as a nation, Joness Alfred C. Kinsey will forever change our thinking about how one mans agony became a vehicle for the continual struggle for human understanding.

Susan M. Reverby,
director of womens studies, Wellesley College

What [Kinsey] did not confide were any secrets of his own. These are revealed for the first time in Jones biography, and they make his book as shocking as The Kinsey Report . Jones is everything his subject is not: humorous, patient, compassionate and moral. By writing what is both a biography of Kinsey and of pre-war America, Jones allows you to make up your mind. Without being sensationalist, this is a sensational book.

Laura Cumming, The Guardian (London)

A superb biography, worthy of this powerfully influential and controversial figure in our history. It shows Kinseys inner demons, including his homosexuality and masochism, even as it honors his great and liberating achievement. Above all, Joness massively researched and judiciously argued book inspires trust.

Paul Robinson, Richard Lyman Professor of Humanities, Stanford University

Jones has written a definitive work, conveying trust by handling his sensational data unsensationally. Readers will be riveted.

Publishers Weekly , starred review

An exhaustive, compelling portrait of a scientist hailed as both a genius and a dirty old man.

Kirkus Reviews

I have never read any text quite so meticulously researched. Jones comes as near to the truth about Kinsey as anyone could, short of bringing him back from the dead to fill out one of his own questionnaires. We must always be grateful to Jones for illuminating the man so clearly.

Claire Rayner, The Observer (London)

Jones paints a brilliant picture of a controversial, dedicated scientist. Jones has some shocking revelations, but this fascinating biography provides insights into recent cultural history and a tormented man who exposed the prevailing norms of sexual conduct as national hypocrisy.

Library Journal

[Jones] has an instinct for the way in which objective scrutiny can have a de-humanizing effect, and may conceal motives of less than scientific purity.

Christopher Hitchens, Times Literary Supplement (London)

A fascinating account of a man who despite, or perhaps because of, his double life, looks set to remain the most influential figure in the field of sex research.

Veronica Groocock, New Statesman (London)

My biography of the year is Alfred C. Kinsey . Jones revelation [is] so psychologically acute, so sensitively explained that we feel it was obvious all along. Unflagging, vital, beautifully written, it is a literary masterpiece.

Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times (London)

The truth, as James H. Joness masterly biography of Kinsey makes clear, is that Kinsey was not so much a scientist as a campaigner for greater sexual liberation who used science as his chosen vehicle. Seen in this light, he becomes a more attractive person: driven by demons, certainly, but with a strongly-felt purpose.

editorial, The Times (London)

A fascinating account of a fantastic American.
Alan Wolfe, The New Republic

James H. Jones

ALFRED C. KINSEY

a Life

Copyright 1997 by James H. Jones

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First published as a Norton paperback 2004

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110.

Book design by Antonina Krass
Composition and manufacturing by the Haddon Craftsmen, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jones, James H. (James Howard), 1943
Alfred C. Kinsey : a life / James H. Jones.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-393-04086-0

1. Kinsey, Alfred C. (Alfred Charles), 18941956. 2. Sexologists
United StatesBiography. 3. SexologyUnited States. I. Title.
HQ18.32.K56J65 1997

306.7 0973dc21 97-27506

CIP

ISBN 0-393-32724-8 pbk.
ISBN 978-0-39324-534-9 (e-book)

W . W . Norton & Company, Inc.

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I n August 1956, Alfred Charles Kinsey, the worlds most famous sex researcher, lay dying. Pneumonia had put him in the hospital, but heart disease had been grinding him down for decades. The last few years had been particularly nasty, as he waged his losing battle against chest pains, shortness of breath, and fluid buildup in his lungs, the classic symptoms of congestive heart failure. This is not a gentle death, and Kinsey was suffering greatly.

Yet far greater than his physical pain was the torment that had gripped his soul. Things had not gone well for Kinsey since 1953 when his portrait had appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Sales of Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), his long-awaited sequel to Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948), had been disappointing; a congressional committee had investigated his research and all but accused him of being a Communist; the Rockefeller Foundation, his financial patron, had withdrawn its support; and financial problems were threatening to close his beloved Institute for Sex Research.