The woman behind the New Deal the life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and his moral conscience
Frances Perkins is no longer a household name, yet she was one of the most influential women of the twentieth century. Frances Perkins was named Secretary of Labor by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. As the first female cabinet secretary, at the height of the Great Depression, she spearheaded the fight t...
| Main Author: | Downey, Kirstin. |
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| Format: | Books Print Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
New York :
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday,
c2009.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: |
Frances Perkins is no longer a household name, yet she was one of the most influential women of the twentieth century. Frances Perkins was named Secretary of Labor by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. As the first female cabinet secretary, at the height of the Great Depression, she spearheaded the fight to improve the lives of America's working people while juggling her own family responsibilities. Perkins's ideas became the cornerstones of the most important social welfare legislation in the nation's history, including unemployment compensation, child labor laws, the forty-hour work week, and Social Security...--From publisher description. |
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| Physical Description: |
xiii, 458 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. ; 25 cm. |
| Bibliography: |
Includes bibliographical references (p. [433]-444) and index. |
| ISBN: |
9780385513654 0385513658 |
| Author Notes: |
KIRSTIN DOWNEY is a frequent contributor to The Washington Post , where she was a staff writer from 1988 to 2008, winning press association awards for her business and economic reporting. She shared in the 2008 Pulitzer Prize awarded to the Post staff for its coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. In 2000, she was awarded a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University. She lives in Washington, D.C. |