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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Very brutally sad story.
This is such a sad book but so powerful how a handful of women despite being victims of radium poisoning fought back for the rest of the world. Without their sacrifice radium and the industries using them would have continued on poisoning the world. Similar compounds and chemicals may also exist in other industries, the book shows you how corporate, government and medical people collude and hide the truths or are subverted when they search for the truth.
I loved how the author humanized each of these women, their dreams, their hopes, their families and their sickness. The heroes have been the chief medical examiner, the lawyers, the husbands and the women themselves. I highly recommend this book and can’t believe that even as of 2016 the areas where the radium studios existed still are radioactive. Where all this cancer exist, it might bode well to investigate the past of your home or the industries that existed there.
This was a difficult listen. Not because the prose was difficult to decipher, but because it was hard to hear the suffering of the women involved. The author was able to gain access to lots of primary source material, which helped her to fill in the women’s histories. She wrote the book because all the previous literature on the subject was scientific in nature and she thought the women deserved a biography. She did well.
Kate tells the story of the Radium Girls. These were women who were employed at several luminous clock dial facilities. Little was known about the Radium paint at the time. The girls were told it was safe and the pay was good. So, they world put the brushes in their mouths to make a fine tip. After a few years, many became sick and died. This book traces the deaths and the lawsuits filed as the women discovered the company had tried to cover the dangers up.
The narrator on this is excellent also.
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore delves into the lives of the women who painted dials and clocks for the U.S. military during World War I. The paint they used contained radium, a radioactive substance that glowed in the dark, thus its use for aircraft indicators. The girls, hired by U.S. Radium Corporation (USRC), were unaware of the dangers of the radium compound they used, and the company reassured them frequently that the substance was perfectly safe. The girls, mostly teenagers and early-twenty-somethings, developed a technique to make their lines straight. They put the brushes with the radium compound into their mouth so the bristles could produce the tiny lines required by the company.
Lip…dip…paint.
The girls also painted their fingernails with the compound and put it on their eyelashes, loving the glow-in-the-dark effect it had. Their jobs were lucrative and they enjoyed having parties and wearing fashionable clothes. Even after the war ended, there was a demand for radium painted products.
After a few years, some of the women began developing serious health problems and then dying. It took a while for them, their dentists, and their doctors to make the connection between their jobs and the radium. Naturally, they went after USRC, whom they claimed knew about the dangers of radium but withheld the information from them.
Naturally, the company did everything it could denying any responsibility and would not claim liability. The women spent years fighting USRC and time, realizing that they might not live long enough to see justice served.
Moore based her book on a number of interviews with the relatives of the radium girls, and plenty of court records. Most disturbing, though, was the details in which she describes the deteriorating health of the radium girls, chronicling their rapid declines and suffering to death meticulously. It got rather stomach-churning in some instances to read what was happening to these women. In fact, there were times in the book, I thought Moore might be putting too much detail in their symptoms but it does illustrate how poorly these women were treated by their employers, doctors and even townsfolk.
What is chilling about this book is the corruption of the USRC to deny these girls the lives they should have had all for the sake of making a buck. The dangers of radium had been known since 1901 when the Curies first discovered it. The company knew of those dangers but deliberately lied to the girls to cover their complicity.
Sound familiar?
Story of powerful women tragic but inspiring.
This book will break your heart and make you so angry at the same time. Reading the book in today’s climate makes you realize how far we haven’t come, in regards to workers and women in society.
I really hope Kate Moore writes additional books for me to enjoy in the future. I had vaguely remembered hearing about the women who pointed their paintbrushes with their mouths when painting watch dials made luminous with radium, but knew nothing else. Ms. Moore’s story of the women who worked in this industry, sickened, and died is heartbreaking and enthralling. I was awake until 3:00 a.m. reading this book because I simply could not put it down.
Moore’s aim in writing this book was to give voice to the women who were involved and fought to be compensated for their suffering and the suffering of other girls who had been their co-workers. In her afterword, Moore says that there had been 2 books written but they concentrated on the legal and scientific side of the issue. Moore wanted to put a human face on this tragedy by introducing the reader to the girls who were affected by the corporations’ indifference to their workers’ welfare and their interest in maximizing profits. And when they women were hired they were in fact girls; most were still in their teens and grateful to earn more money than they could working as a shop girl or a domestic.
The women worked in radium dial plants in New Jersey and Illinois and were told repeatedly that radium was not dangerous; in fact in the early 20th century radium was touted as a healthful tonic and sold by many companies as a cure-all. When the women began to sicken, they were told it was not possible that their illnesses were related to their jobs; one woman’s death certificate actually gave the cause of death as syphilis.
Kate Moore’s writing reminded me of Erik Larsen; she has the ability to bring people to life for the reader. I was at turns infuriated and saddened by what these women had to endure. I highly recommend this book.
This is an American dark secret taking place in the 1920’s. It is the tragic story of Radium Dial painters, nobody told them it would kill them. Once they started getting sick there was nobody to turn to in the beginning, they suffered in ways we can’t imagine.
I would have given this 5 stars but it could have been written with less pages, it gets a bit repetitive, though the author may have wanted it that way for effect.
It was my choice for my book group, we all had such a strong reaction to it and something so horrid to happen to anyone working to make a living.
I recommend this book.
I got lost in the book. Girls working in watch factory coming into direct contact with radium. The girls were ignorant of the danger of coming into contact with radium. Then the girls got sick one by one. Company taken to court but denied culpability. In the end most girls died before seeing the case through. I felt the girls anger, injustice and sorrow because of their slow death. One of the best books I have ever read and it’s all true.
Tough story; well told.
I cannot say enough good things about Kate Moore’s The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women. Before I get ahead of myself, though, I should say that I had some vague knowledge, an inkling, if you will, about women who became very radioactive – and subsequently very sick – painting watches one hundred or so years ago. That is about all I could have told you before reading The Radium Girls.
In Radium Girls, Moore not only provides a thorough recounting of the history of the radium industry, but also of the personal stories and prolonged court battle the women fought in fits and starts before finally and ultimately prevailing. (OSHA is just one of the many workplace safety advances that owes its existence to the radium girls’ fight.)
It is impossible to read this book without feeling angry at the abuse of power exercised by the company, as well as the utter lack of rights had by the women, not only as workers, but as women. I tore through this book, equal parts fascinated and enraged as the story unfolded. Moore splits her narration between the plant in Orange, New Jersey, and that in Ottawa, Illinois, where hundreds of mostly young, mostly poor girls, often from immigrant families, painstakingly painted the numbers onto watch faces with a paint whose active ingredient was none other than pure radium. Unsurprisingly, from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, the women soon began falling seriously ill with a variety of ailments from necrosis of the jaw to bone sarcomas to legs that suddenly shortened, leaving them with pronounced limps – and pain.
As I said before, I cannot offer enough praise for this work, which – in the same vein as such works as Ashes Under Water and Dead Wake – chronicles an important yet largely forgotten episode in this country’s history.
(This review was originally published at http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2017/09/the-radium-girls-dark-story-of-americas.html)
This was an incredible book. I couldn’t believe the way the women were poisoned and all of their health problems ignored. I think more people should know about this.
This book was very good. I enjoyed the book, and found it very informative. When I was in collage one of my professors told the class about some of the problems these girls had because of their exposure to radium. Based on what I know about radium and our thinking about how safe this material was thought to be I can believe the problem these girls had.
This was a very difficult book to read. It had me clenching my jaws and close to tears. It brought to mind the thalidomide babies, the cancers caused by asbestos, the drugs barely tested before being rushed to market—why? To line the pockets of big Pharma , to increase business profits with little regard to human safety. It makes me think of what I read every day in the news: profit and greed, government elected by the people to protect the people instead being in the pockets of big business. My heart goes out to all who have suffered the ill effects of fertilizers, chemicals, and drugs that do more harm than good. And may those who choose to tell blatant lies, live forever with their guilt.
A fantastic book telling the true story of women in the early years of the 20th century who painted clock dials so they shown in the dark. Little did they know the paint was poisonous. Later, their bodies riddled with radium poisoning, their dreams fell apart. They looked for help from the company they worked for and from the law but found little solace. Their strength and courage comes out on every page. Their fight changing regulations for those that came after. An excellent read about a dark chapter in US business.
A well researched account of a tragic occupational health event that I doubt very people knew happened early in the 20th century to a group of young women working with radium based paint.
This is a must-read, very interesting book. Not a happy read, but everyone needs to know this history.
I loved someone wrote the horrific story of these young women. Put to work, or death and the owner of the company knew that the radium was a death entente. Their pain and suffering for years was tragic and terribly sad
A lot of research went into writing this book. Real eye opener and a page turner.
This is a true story of girls who painted radium on clocks and watches in the early 20th century and affect it had on them and their families.