All-TIME 100 Nonfiction Books

The Kinsey Reports

The two volumes that make up what are considered the Kinsey Reports look harmless enough: charts, numbers, graphs, surveys. But their content — the first truly scientific work on sexual behavior in men and women — triggered a firestorm when they were published in the 1940s and ’50s. Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female battled the long-held taboo against talking about sex that led to ignorance, secrecy and plain lies about intercourse, masturbation, sexual development and homosexuality. Kinsey and his team of researchers at Indiana University conducted face-to-face interviews with thousands of men and women for their groundbreaking and scandalous reports, which included the Kinsey Scale, used to judge one’s sexual orientation, and findings on foreplay, orgasm and bisexuality that had never before been studied and that forever changed the way we view sex.

Next: Our Bodies, Ourselves