Books, Arts & Manners: What the Doctor Saw

Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life, by James H. Jones (Norton, 937 pp., $39.95)

“TENNESSEE Williams, self-taught, does it;/Kinsey with a deafening report does it;/Let’s do it, let’s fall in love,” Noél Coward suggested in an updated set of lyrics he wrote for Cole Porter’s classic song, confident that his listeners would get the point. It was a safe bet. No scientific treatise since The Origin of Species has been more widely read, widely discussed, widely criticized, or widely remembered than Alfred C. Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Forty-nine years after its publication, the book universally known as the Kinsey Report continues to influence American thinking on sex, even though its major findings have been disproved or significantly modified by later studies; whenever you encounter the oft-repeated claim that one in ten Americans is homosexual, you are hearing a distant echo of Kinsey’s original research.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.

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Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life, by James H. Jones (Norton, 937 pp., $39.95)

“TENNESSEE Williams, self-taught, does it;/Kinsey with a deafening report does it;/Let’s do it, let’s fall in love,” Noél Coward suggested in an updated set of lyrics he wrote for Cole Porter’s classic song, confident that his listeners would get the point. It was a safe bet. No scientific treatise since The Origin of Species has been more widely read, widely discussed, widely criticized, or widely remembered than Alfred C. Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Forty-nine years after its publication, the book universally known as the Kinsey Report continues to influence American thinking on sex, even though its major findings have been disproved or significantly modified by later studies; whenever you encounter the oft-repeated claim that one in ten Americans is homosexual, you are hearing a distant echo of Kinsey’s original research.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.