A New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon Charts Bestseller!
For fans of Hidden Figures, comes the incredible true story of the women heroes who were exposed to radium in factories across the U.S. in the early 20th century, and their brave and groundbreaking battle to strengthen workers’ rights, even as the fatal poison claimed their own lives…
In the dark years of the … claimed their own lives…
In the dark years of the First World War, radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright. Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these “shining girls” are the luckiest alive — until they begin to fall mysteriously ill. And, until they begin to come forward.
As the women start to speak out on the corruption, the factories that once offered golden opportunities ignore all claims of the gruesome side effects. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America’s early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers’ rights that will echo for centuries to come. A timely story of corporate greed and the brave figures that stood up to fight for their lives, these women and their voices will shine for years to come.
Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the “wonder” substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives…
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Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.
It’s not very often that I hand out 5 stars, but this book deserves every single one. The Radium Girls are the young women exposed to radium while painting luminescent numbers on clock faces. Little did they know that they were being poisoned using their lip/dip/paint technique. Using their lips to create a fine point in the paint brush hairs, they were ingesting minute amounts of radium.
The author said “I wanted to showcase their shining spirits in a book that would tell their story – not just the story of the famous professionals who had helped them.” She did so by creating a powerful story told from the women’s perspective, and she did a wonderful job of researching, piecing together diaries, letters and interviews into a heartbreaking tale of inner strength, courage and friendship. Once the women began to become ill, they stood by each other and worried more about each other than themselves. What made it all the more poignant was that they were so young, just getting married and having children, when their radium poisoning symptoms started. I cannot imagine living with the immense pain these women endured.
Just as powerful is the injustice of the men who thought so little of these women. They encouraged the women to continue their dangerous work by lying to them and telling them it was safe work, even good for them. Even after their teeth started to fall out, their jawbones were removed, sarcomas appeared, brittle bones broke easily, and women were dying. How did they live with themselves? Their greed made them lie to these women and do everything in their power to ensure they wouldn’t be compensated a dime. Yet these women found strength in numbers and stood up to their previous employer and the company’s doctors and lawyers. They stood together to fight for justice, and did it for each other. These are women I would have loved to have known.
This is an incredible tale, and I can’t given it any higher recommendation!
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Good reading! A history of a terrible tragedy.
Who would have thought that back in the twenties, there would be that much legal wrangling. The characterizations were tremendous. The reader feels for each and every woman involved. It’s a medical story, its a woman’s story, it’s a legal story, and it’s a human story.
It made me mad. Such a clear contrast between brave, strong people (women and their families) and amoral people in power. This book reveals a corner of history not seen by most students.
Everyone should read this book to understand more fully the tragedy these women faced, the injustice they were given and their long lasting contribution to the world.
Incredible part of our history. Illustrates the employer/employee relationship before there were laws requiring employers to “care” about their workers. This shows a time when employees were not even valued as much as a piece of machinery or equipment. Profit was everything. This should be read by everyone to put them on guard against something like this ever happening again. A shameful part of our history.
This is a non-fiction book that tells the story of the young women who painted glowing faces on watches with paint containing radium. I found out what this radium did to these women and the tragic turn most of their lives took. It was very interesting, but difficult to read how these women were treated!
Human greed takes advantage of human nature.
A true and haunting story. The horrors people
inflict on each other in search of a profit are inconceivable and truly frightening. The total
disregard for the health of these women, their families, and that the community endured at the hands of this employer are nearly unbelievable. A tale to take to heart.
Informative on a history of which I was not aware. I found it tedious, loaded with details which for me did not contribute to the underlying aim of the book.
It was well-worth reading., But the graphic describing the effects of radiation poisoning. is disturbing and depressing. The characters are well-developed and one feels deeply for them in their suffering. I would not recommend anyone feeling depressed reading it.
Such a good job of illuminating an interesting period, and of bringing to life the girls involved. I will remember this book for a long time.
It was such a well researched book. I was in disbelief that it actually happened because the injustices that these women suffered was imaginable. I am grateful to know this unknown piece of history now- should be taught in schools.
One of the most amazing and saddest books I have ever read.
I used to work in Radiation, and what those poor people went through is stupid Ying! Rhus is a book that makes you believe in regulation!
Excellent read. The facts of the radium watchface painters’ deterioration of health are chronicled. It is so sad that there was no protection for these young women. This story causes one to realize why unions came to be.
This is currently one of my favorite reads of 2020. It is both tragic and triumphant and left me feeling inspired by the young women who fought tooth and nail for themselves and their friends when almost nobody else would.
We now know the dangers of radium, but Kate Moore shows us through the lens of history how sensational it was when it was discovered. My heart was full of dread knowing the inevitable, but I could still imagine the wonder surrounding this new element and how enticing it must have been to the general public. Coupled with the fact that working in the radium-dial factories was a (seemingly) incredible opportunity for young women, the book builds up a perfect storm of sorts that you can’t look away from.
The Radium Girls are absolutely inspiring. They are women full of life and potential, and it can be extremely hard to see them depicted with such hopes for their futures only to become victims of corporate greed. Still, in the face of such bleak fates, they refuse to allow the injustices done to them to stand, and they choose to fight.
This book will leave you feeling empowered, outraged, grief-stricken, and in the end maybe even just a little bit hopeful, and I cannot recommend it enough.
A warning to squeamish readers:
Moore does not hold back in her descriptions of radium poisoning and its effects on the body. I felt it was essential to fully grasp the severity of the disease, but it is not a forgiving one. It is horrific, especially knowing that it happened to real people. I imagine most readers will have no issues, but if you are particularly sensitive to this type of content, I would proceed with caution.
Times were tough back then. Very informative book.
*********READ THIS BOOK*******
Not sure where to even start with how I feel about this book! Amazing, tragic, mad, inspired, brought me to tears and laughed at times, and a lot more. It is a true story of what happened to the women who worked with radium painting dials for the watches and then for the altitude and other dials on the airplanes during the war because it glowed and the pilots could see them in the dark. It was an amazing job and not only gave women work when there was no work and an edge to our pilots, which probably saved many of their lives. Unfortunately it did not save their lives. Radium is radioactive, which at the start was unknown so the women’s cancer was not blamed on the companies employing them. They thought radium was safe and had health benefits, they put it in toothpaste and in the ground around playgrounds – to this day there are placed in the USA that are still radioactive due to this. To paint the dials they had to have the brush tip very pointed so they were told to put it in their mouth to make it pointed. The girls when they went out at night used to glow due to the dust on their clothes from the radium.
Anyway will not give more of the story away, sometimes I thought I had to put the book down and then in an hour I would be picking it back up again. I can not praise the author enough, amazing writing, she went to the decedents of the girls to get a more personalized story of their life and their struggles as well as the families. Love that she had copies of the real pictures of the girls themselves and some of the horrible things they had to endure. It is a heavy read but these girls should be put on a pedestal as they are the reason we have the workers health and safety act. This is the longest review I have left but this book is worth it.
It reads like suspense, horror, and thriller… Absolutely page-turning. The beginning is horrifying, the middle is mind-numbiningly frustrating, and the ending is bittersweet.