ABSTRACT
Ruth Rosner Kornhauser is an influential yet mysterious figure in the field of criminology for a number of reasons. Social Sources of Delinquency: An Appraisal of Analytic Models (SSD—Kornhauser 1978), a book adaptation of her University of Chicago doctoral dissertation, is one of the field's landmark contributions. It also stands alone in comparison to the rest of her research output. For the most part, her work did not address the subject of crime and delinquency. Outside of her book, the totality of her publication record reads as follows: a book chapter summarizing the Warner approach to stratification (Kornhauser 1953), one peer-reviewed article on union participation in Labor History (Kornhauser 1961), and a coauthored book review (Kornhauser and Hirschi 1986). It would be unfair to apply today's standard measure of academic success—the number of peer-reviewed manuscripts published—to an earlier generation of scholars. Nevertheless, with the omission of SSD, a curriculum vitae such as this would not immediately generate predictions of academic superstardom. But what an exceptional case her book proved to be!
