It is the year 1939, and a revolution has broken out on the campus of Indiana University. Alfred Kinsey, a zoologist, is studying the sexual behavior of men and women—purely empirically, of course. John Milk, a student and ambitious provincial, becomes captivated by him and joins his closest circle of researchers. T. C. Boyle tells the story of a brilliant, fanatical hero while portraying the prudish and hypocritical society of America in the 1940s and 1950s.