Frances Perkins, F.D.R.’s Secretary of Labor, and the first female member of a Presidential cabinet, was a key architect of the New Deal, guiding F.D.R. to enact some of his most lasting labor legislation—Social Security, unemployment compensation, minimum wage, child labor laws, and the forty-hour workweek. Downey’s biography traces Perkins’s career from its beginnings (volunteer work with Jane Addams’s Hull House) and vividly conveys her subject’s determination and political savvy. Perkins faced many difficulties: the arrival of the Second World War shut her out of the President’s inner circle; she supported a mentally ill husband and had trouble balancing work and family life. In addition, her contribution to American history has often been overshadowed by the criticism she drew as a woman in power. ♦
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