Kinsey: Sex the Measure of All Things

"... a sympathetic, insightful and highly readable story.... Gathorne-Hardy

... shows us a very human and fallible but ultimately likable Kinsey, impatient and irritable at times, stubborn, willful, certainly a monomaniac about his research interests, whether gall wasps or human sexuality." --New York Times Book Review

"... revises [the] revisionism and presents Kinsey in an altogether more favorable light... a humane and indefatigable sex educator, as well as an unfairly maligned martyr of American priggishness...." --Salon

Gathorne-Hardy's literate, major biography of Kinsey is the first to give a balanced portrait of one of this century's pioneering researchers and social reformers. The author interviewed in depth surviving family members, close colleagues, friends, and lovers. In this subtle, often witty, penetrating book, he reveals not just a series of new revelations, but whole new aspects of this complex, difficult, contradictory, heroic, obsessive, and ultimately sympathetic man.

..". revises [the] revisionism and presents Kinsey in an altogether more favorable light ... a human and indefatigable sex educator, as well as an unfairly maligned martyr of American priggishness...."

A moving and humane portrait of one of this century's great researchers and social reformers.

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy served as a consultant during the filming of the motion picture Kinsey. He is author of The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny and lives in England.

Preface to the American Edition

Acknowledgments

Illustrations

Part I: Laying the Patterns: 1903-20

1. Childhood in Hoboken: 1894-1903

2. South Orange to Bowdoin College: 1903-14

3. College--and First Appearance of the Gall Wasp: 1914-20

Part II: Bloomington, Galls, Marriage--First Steps into Sex Research: 1920-39

4. The Married Professor

5. Sex Life

6. Gall Wasp Triumph

7. The Marriage Course

8. A Brief History of Sex Research

Part III: Sex: The Male Volume

9. How to Get at the Truth

10. Money, Support, Attacks--The Shape of Things to Come: 1941-3

11. Kinsey at his Exercise: 1943-4

12. Racing for the Male Report: 1944-7

13. Writing the Male Volume--Science and Self-expression: 1947

14. Publication: Criticism, Praise, Success!

Part IV: Sex: The Female Volume

15. Money--Branching Out--Kinsey's Sexual Experiments: 1948-9

16. Expansion--and Discovering the Female: 1949-50

17. Filming--"Philosophy"--Women--Writing--Wescott: 1950-1

18. Bisexuality--and the Case Against Kinsey

19. Writing and Publication of the Female Volume--Science as Sex and Literature

20. The Paper Explosion

Part V: Decline and Fall

21. Money--and Deterioration: 1953-5

22. Europe: October-December 1955

23. Death

24. Conclusions

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Brief Note on Sources

References

Published Works by Alfred C. Kinsey

Bibliography

Index