The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin - Brook, Daniel (Hardcover)

The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin – Brook, Daniel (Hardcover)

$32.99

An illuminating portrait of a lost thinker, German-Jewish sexologist and activist Magnus Hirschfeld.

More than a century ago, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, dubbed the “Einstein of Sex,” grew famous (and infamous) for his liberating theory of sexual relativity. Today, he’s been largely forgotten.

Journalist Daniel Brook retraces Hirschfeld’s rollicking life and reinvigorates his legacy, recovering one of the great visionaries of the twentieth century. In an era when gay sex was a crime and gender roles rigid, Hirschfeld taught that each of us is their own unique mixture of masculinity and femininity. Through his public advocacy for gay rights and his private counseling of patients toward self-acceptance, he became the intellectual impresario of Berlin’s cabaret scene and helped turn his hometown into the world’s queer capital. But he also enraged the Nazis, who ransacked his Institute for Sexual Science and burned his books

Driven from his homeland, Hirschfeld traveled to America, Asia, and the Middle East to research sexuality on a global scale. Through his harrowing lived experience of antisemitic persecution and a pivotal late-in-life interracial romance, he came to see that race, like gender, was a human invention. Hirschfeld spent his final years in exile trying to warn the world of the genocidal dangers of racism.

Rich in passion and intellect, The Einstein of Sex at last brings together this unsung icon’s work on sexuality, gender, and race and recovers the visionary who first saw beyond the binaries. A century after his groundbreaking work―as the fights for personal freedom and societal acceptance rage on―Hirschfeld’s gift for thinking beyond the confines of his world has much to teach us

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"Jaunty… Brook succeeds in bringing his subject to fresh life, including a description of Hirschfeld’s world travels in 1930, which he undertook to lecture and research."
― Casey Schwartz, Washington Post

"You’ve probably never heard of Magnus Hirschfeld―and this is an injustice to a truly great man. Daniel Brook’s excellent biography. . . resurrects Dr. Hirschfeld’s status as one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, whose insights into human nature can illuminate our turbulent times."
― Deborah Mason, BookPage

"[T]his biography is an absolute must-read: Laugh, cry, and rejoice in the liberationist ethos of this legendary doctor of sex and his eternally relevant message."
― Holly Devon, Antigravity

"History comes alive with the full-blooded character of Hirschfeld and the quests not only of the scientists but of the people they championed."
― Tim Pfaff, Bay Area Reporter

"[In] this vital biography. . . Brook’s elegant elucidation of Hirschfeld’s theories proves that there’s nothing new about the idea that gender and sexuality exist on a spectrum, and the chilling account of the persecution Hirschfeld faced shows the disturbing ways in which authoritarian leaders stigmatize queerness. This will stick with readers long after they finish the last page."
― Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A well-informed life of a scientist worth remembering. "
― Kirkus Reviews

"Finally, a fitting tribute to the Godfather of Sexology, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld! Sweeping in scope and immensely readable, featuring a veritable tour de shvants and cabaret of scene-work, The Einstein of Sex paints the sexuality of the great man back into his body of expertise. The queer world applauds such a triumph."
― Robert W. Fieseler, author of American Scare and Tinderbox

"Magnus Hirschfeld was one of the twentieth century’s most influential social scientists, but today his name is largely forgotten. In this riveting historical biography, Daniel Brook narrates the brilliant life and violent suppression of a queer, Jewish, cosmopolitan intellectual whose ideas about sexuality and race were ahead of their time and as urgent today as they were a century ago."
― Eric Klinenberg, Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences, New York University

"A revelatory biography of perhaps our most important unsung queer hero. Over a century ago, Magnus Hirschfeld introduced the Western world to the heretical idea that humans navigate spectrums of sexuality, gender, and even race, and that this complexity is deeply healthy for our development as humans. We now know Hirschfeld was right."
― John Cameron Mitchell, Tony award-winning director, writer, and star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch

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