This biography of Addams centers on her commitment to children; it moves from there to the collaborations with dynamic Hull House residents that led her to political activism and legislative work. Meigs carefully incorporates stories from Addams's life to highlight characteristics of Addams's personality and to reveal the depth of her thinking. A portrait only of Addams's Hull House career, this biography encourages readers to build on the work that is Addams's legacy to the world.

Jane Addams is most widely remembered as a founder of Hull House, but her social vision extended far beyond Chicago's Halsted Street. The first real adventurer in the unexplored territory of social amelioration in America, Addams worked tirelessly on behalf of a multitude of social causes, including industrial and educational reform, drug laws, sanitation, disaster relief, and food purity. In 1931 she won the Nobel Prize for Peace, a tribute to the decades of energy and eloquence she devoted to eradicating intolerance and elevating human life to a more humane standard.
James Weber Linn's life of this forceful public figure offers a rare glimpse of the private Addams, from her childhood and schooling through her first efforts in public service and her rise to a position of national influence. Linn's biography is based on Addams's personal papers, which she turned over to him before she died: files of her manuscripts, published and unpublished, along with all of her letters and papers, from her first valentine to her last speech. Out of this treasure trove, in combination with Addams's substantial published works, he has written a unique life of his aunt, beautifully illuminating her private reflections and inner strength as well as her formidable public persona.