The purpose of this book can be easily stated.
Kinsey has looked at sex. This book looks at Kinsey.

The publication of Kinsey has met with such re-
sponse from the general public that Lionel Trilling
has called this event a cultural phenomenon. And
Hadley Cantril has suggested that the magnitude of
public curiosity about what Kinsey says about sex
may well be taken as a measure of the public's igno-
rance of the subject.

This is a whole view of Kinsey, of the first volume
as well as the second. But it is also a view of the
public and professional reactions to the first book,
and of that unprecedented build-up by the press for
the publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human
Female.

Quoting Trilling again -- and he is more widely
quoted on Kinsey than almost anyone else -- he re-
marked that it was good for Kinsey to turn his Report
loose on the general public, because that turned the
public loose on Kinsey, which is also good.

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