The Book Prize Index

The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience

Kirstin Downey

Written with a wit that echoes Frances Perkins's own, award-winning journalist Downey offers a riveting exploration of the woman who was named Secretary of Labor by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933, and how and why Perkins slipped into historical oblivion.

BiographyBiography · medium confidenceBiography81 signalsLlm Classifier: Biography -> BiographyAward Category: Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography -> BiographyAward Category: Biography -> BiographyPresidential BiographyPresidency & Executive PowerLabor, Work & Organizing

Award History

0 wins · 1 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for BiographyMajor2009FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (1)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    • Frances Perkins95%
    Show lower-confidence suggestions

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • Franklin Roosevelt55%

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    35 / 100 academic

    Serious trade

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 72%.