Even as a lad, Alfred Charles Kinsey was not quite what he seemed to be. A perfectionist, he could be hard on himself, both figuratively and literally. Perhaps as a way to punish himself, he inserted objects – ouch! – in his penis, graduating from straws to the handle of a hairbrush. After two years of training as an engineer, Kinsey enrolled in Bowdoin College in Maine as a biology major, the first love of this budding naturalist. Indeed, his high-school yearbook had projected him, in a worthy bit of prophecy, to become "a second Darwin." As a graduate student...