"...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.

Two orphaned boys - one Russian (Ivan), and one British (Michael) -may or may not be brothers, Ivan is brought up brutally on the bleak rural steppes, while Michael is cosseted by his grandmother in the Home Counties. And yet they coexist in a sort of parallel universe' their lives interconnected, physically in the text, as well as throug a common yearning - to discover their origins and purpose in life and to find elusive romantic and emotional fulfilment. Ivan manages to escape from his past and present to find a new life abroad. He is in almost constant motion, where Michael remains more or less rooted to the spot. His journey of discovery is through a strange, obsessive internal landscape. Gathorne-Hardy combines a rare narrative skill with compassion and humour

Alfred Kinsey was the twentieth century's first scientifically reputable and most influential researcher into sex. His Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (The Kinsey Report), published in 1948, was an explosive bestseller, followed in 1953 by his even more radical statistics on female sexuality - both based on over 18,000 case histories. But Kinsey's exploration went much further than that. Bisexual, he experimented with many of the behaviours he was hearing about; and his wife and close colleagues experimented as well. For this remarkable biography - which forms the basis of a major film - Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy has interviewed in depth Kinsey's remaining family, his close colleagues, friends and lovers. With wit and subtlety he reveals whole new aspects of this complex, heroic, obsessive and ultimately sympathetic man.

"...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.

Two orphaned boys - one Russian (Ivan), and one British (Michael) -may or may not be brothers, Ivan is brought up brutally on the bleak rural steppes, while Michael is cosseted by his grandmother in the Home Counties. And yet they coexist in a sort of parallel universe' their lives interconnected, physically in the text, as well as throug a common yearning - to discover their origins and purpose in life and to find elusive romantic and emotional fulfilment. Ivan manages to escape from his past and present to find a new life abroad. He is in almost constant motion, where Michael remains more or less rooted to the spot. His journey of discovery is through a strange, obsessive internal landscape. Gathorne-Hardy combines a rare narrative skill with compassion and humour

Alfred Kinsey was the twentieth century's first scientifically reputable and most influential researcher into sex. His Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (The Kinsey Report), published in 1948, was an explosive bestseller, followed in 1953 by his even more radical statistics on female sexuality - both based on over 18,000 case histories. But Kinsey's exploration went much further than that. Bisexual, he experimented with many of the behaviours he was hearing about; and his wife and close colleagues experimented as well. For this remarkable biography - which forms the basis of a major film - Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy has interviewed in depth Kinsey's remaining family, his close colleagues, friends and lovers. With wit and subtlety he reveals whole new aspects of this complex, heroic, obsessive and ultimately sympathetic man.