Dear Miss Perkins
A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany

I don't envy authors who have to tackle a notoriously distant character from history. Very often these people leave almost no trace of their real emotions and an author is left to piece together a cohesive narrative from little true insights. Rebecca Brenner Graham has her hands full with her book D......more

'Through a combination of relaxing visa requirements, reducing deportation numbers, devising the corporate affidavit for businesses to finance refugees, and collaborating with the German-Jewish Children's Aid Inc...Perkins contributed to saving the lives of tens of thousands of refugees from Nazism'......more

Could the U. S. be a refuge to oppressed people? Did it want to be? Could it overcome its own prejudices to be the “golden door?” from Dear Miss Perkins by Rebecca Brenner Graham American has a long history of anti-immigration, xenophobic, and racist sentiment. And yet I grew up with the myth of the......more

I enjoyed every moment of reading this book about Francis Perkins, the first female secretary of Labor throughout Roosevelt’s 3 terms. From 1933 to 1941, the Labor Department was responsible for Immigration and Naturalization, and rightly so according to Perkins. In 1941, the INS was transferred to......more

I’d like to think the battles Frances Perkins fought against bigotry and xenophobia are far behind us but as many of us know, that is not true. The subtitle of this biography calls it ‘A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany’, however it’s also the story of the first f......more