The Machines of Sex Research describes how researchers worldwide integrated technology into studies of human sexuality in the postwar era. The machines they invented made new ways of seeing bodies possible. Some researchers who studied men used machines like penile strain gauges to police "deviant" male sexuality; others used less painful devices like penis-cameras to study women's sexual responses and map the physiology of their arousal and orgasm. While researchers used the findings from their technological innovations to propose their own views of how people should view their bodies and...

Alfred C. Kinsey's revolutionary studies of human sexual behavior are world-renowned. His meticulous methods of data collection, from comprehensive entomological assemblies to personal sex history interviews, raised the bar for empirical evidence to an entirely new level. In The Classification of Sex, Donna J. Drucker presents an original analysis of Kinsey's scientific career in order to uncover the roots of his research methods. She describes how his enduring interest as an entomologist and biologist in the compilation and organization of mass data sets structured each of his...