About the Book:

Alfred Kinsey's revolutionary sex research sparked one of the most intense cultural debates of the twentieth century — a debate that rages on today. By asking thousands of people about the most intimate aspects of their lives and then revealing the remarkable results to a captivated public eager for information, Kinsey changed the American sexual landscape forever.

Kinsey: Public and Private reflects Oscar-winning screenwriter and director Bill Condon's five-year foray into the facts, figures, and files of Kinsey's life and work for his film Kinsey, which was honoured with the Best Director Award from the British Directors Guild.

In Part One, a fascinating history written exclusively for this volume is enriched by extracts from books, articles, and more than 70 historical photos, cartoons, and images. Supplementing this thorough examination are chronicles of Kinsey's groundbreaking interview technique and comments from current, distinguished experts and academics. Included are reflections on Kinsey and his legacy by David Halberstam, Stanley Elkin, Fannie Hurst, Dr. Billy Graham, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Cornelia Otis Skinner, and Wardell B. Pomeroy; articles from the pages of Time, Life, Look, The New Yorker, and Redbook; material from the archives of The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction in Bloomington, Indiana; and much more.

Part Two of Kinsey: Public and Private focuses on the film, featuring the complete final shooting script, credits, an in-depth Q&A with Bill Condon, and a full-color stills portfolio of 43 photographs, highlighting the main cast: Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, Chris O'Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, Dylan Baker, and Lynn Redgrave.

What people say:

"Dr. Kinsey was a scientist who tried to categorize everyone and then used that process to prove that everyone was different. That's a wonderful contradiction. In trying to separate sex from everything that is imposed on it by culture, religion, and society, he also, like an artist, tried to work out very deep conflicts within himself." — C

"Condon is able to do what I had imagined impossible, to cover Kinsey's whole life—his childhood, his rows with his father, his twenty years of obsessive and painstaking science with gall wasps. And this enables the film, like Kinsey's life, to take on an epic quality." — Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy author of Kinsey: Sex the Measure of All Things

About the Author:

Bill Condon is an American screenwriter and director who is best known for directing and writing the critically acclaimed films Gods and Monsters, Chicago, Kinsey, and Dreamgirls. Born in New York City, he attended Columbia University where he received a degree in philosophy. An article he wrote for Millimeter Magazine brought him to the attention of producer/director Michael Laughlin, for whom Condon wrote his first two features, Strange Behavior and Strange Invaders.