Kinsey: Sex the Measure of All Things

by Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy

Overview

". . . 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253217264
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	10/01/2004
Pages:	528
Sales rank:	993,177
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

..". 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...."

From the Publisher