"Sociology has fallen into a 'dismal abyss' and may soon go the way of phrenology," declared Irving Louis Horowitz in 1994 while a professor of sociology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He feared that the discipline had grown far from its roots of objectivity in studying problems that concern the human condition. Horowitz was born in New York City on September 25, 1929, to Louis and Esther Tepper Horowitz. He was educated at the College of the City of New York (now city College of the City University of New York, or CUNY), B.S.S., 1951; Columbia University, New York City, M.A., 1952; and the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, Ph.D., 1957. In 1950, he married Ruth Narowlansky; they were divorced in 1963. He married Mary Ellen Curtis in 1979 with whom he has two children, Carl and David.

From the beginning of his career as an assistant professor of social...