The new book by the famous Russian social scientist I.S. Kon is a kind of intellectual autobiography. Igor Kon has worked all his life at the intersection of various social and human sciences: sociology, history, anthropology, psychology and sexology. His name is closely associated with the birth in Russia of such disciplines as the history of sociology, sociology of personality, psychology of adolescence, ethnography of childhood, and sexology. Some of his books broke traditional ideas and became bestsellers. Freely, entertainingly, and at times very self-critically, Cohn talks about himself and his time: how his scientific interests were formed, what prompted him to move from one problem and discipline to another, how free this choice was and how his personal interests intersected with the problems of society. For the author’s contemporaries, this may awaken their own memories, and for young people it will help them better understand our recent past, which may not be such a past...