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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Excellent and involving true story of heinous criminal abuse of workers by management who knew exactly what they were doing before and during the doing of it.
Depicts greed of a company at the expense of its young employees.
I had barely heard of the Radium girls before I read the book. It is a sad story and I learned so much about the human spirit, bad and good.
The author, Kate Moore, does an amazing job of personalizing the lives of the young women hired to paint the watch dials with self-luminous substance beginning in 1917. This “paint” turns out to be radium and the women all end up with radiation poisoning. Moore’s great ability at storytelling allows her to share her extensive research in a way that both the physical and legal battles of these women feel like they are family members. The sacrifices these woman made has a direct impact on our understanding of radium today. The book is well written and heartfelt.
Reading what happened to these young women will make you cry and scream. Sad that not much has changed today. Politics still influences public health policy more than science.
A dreadfully tragic true story depicting greed.
Brilliant.
Eye opening account of how profit was valued over women’ lives
Superb!!! A fascinating, tragic, and ultimately empowering look at female history.
This book reveals an important episode in history.
Infuriating true story about unsafe working conditions, lack of government protection, cover ups and the girls who suffered the consequences. Graphic descriptions of medical conditions and large number of characters can make for difficult reading.
This told the very frightening true story of the women who painted dials with radium and the devastating effect that work had on them. It also did an excellent job of documenting their travails to get compensation from their employers.
Excellent!
The innocent girls were proud of their work as dial painters. The luminous dials on watches and aircraft instruments saved lives in WWI. In the 1920’s the dials moved into homes on alarm clocks and wristwatches.
Then they began to die–horrible deaths. Dentists and physicians played detective.
Ms. Moore follows two groups of dial painters in this non-fiction volume which reads better than some novels. Discover the legacy and ponder as a cautionary tale.
A well-researched and harrowing account of the fates of many of the young girls who were employed in the early 20th century to paint the dials of luminous watches and military dials using poisonous radium-based paints. A tale full of the corporate greed, of employers who lied and cheated their way to profitability, but whose immorality was eventually exposed, decades later, through the fearless efforts of their dying former employees. It was the revelations of the radium girls in the court cases they brought that led to significant changes in worker’s rights legislation. So, they did not die in vain.
Although the subject matter of this book is not easy reading, the text is absorbing and enlivened by background stories of the radium girls’ lives and personalities. The author captures very well their youthful high spirits as well as the courage they showed later in the face of their grisly and untimely deaths.
Too bad to be true and very well written.
I found it was very sad, that young girls were lured into working with no regard to precautions for their health. Management knew there were risks, working with radium though they continued to deny there was a problem.
A true story of the girls and women who worked with radium in the early part of the 1900s. Because of these courageous women, we now have rights to protect workers from health hazards in their workplace.
It is the non-fiction book of the girls who dipped their paint brushes into the radium, and then painted the radium onto watch dials. Sadly the radium was toxic and deadly, and the Radium Dial company denied that the radium was causing the illnesses that the girls were experiencing. It was truly tragic and heartbreaking, and it’s about a company who cared little about their employees, but cared very much about their profits. Even though this happened in the early 1920’s, there are companies to this day that care only about profits. Again, sadly, money seems to be the winner.
One of the most jaw dropping books I have read in a decade. Well Researched and Well Done! I have recommended this book to all of my ‘reader’ friends!
Great historical fiction