The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women (Thorndike Press Large Print Popular and Narrative Nonfiction)

Incredible true story; I could not put this book down. Excellent research and storytelling.

This book is incredible! These amazing women from our past--there's really no other way to describe such brave women who had the courage to stand up and fight a government, a business, an industry, and a complete system that was firmly against them... when they were in pain, suffering devastating illness and disease. This book is just incredible. It will bring you to tears, but it's not all sad. It's also very heartwarming and absolutely brilliant. Very well-written, it captures the hearts of these ladies who clearly had a zest for life, wanted to help their country, and then later help their fellow women. This is a testimony to the strength of women, and all of these women were strongly Christian, praying regularly for themselves and each other, at a time when the country was very Christian. This is an absolute must-read!!

Kate Moore’s The Radium Girls is one of those books that makes you want to alternately hug the young women in its early pages and then throw the nearest hard object at the management offices of every radium company in the United States. The opening chapters are almost too sweet, with the young women, bright-eyed, innocent, and armed with nothing more than a steady hand and a dream of a steady paycheck, painting luminous dials as if they were painting their way into history. Spoiler: they were, just not in the way anyone had in mind. The image of girls smiling as they “lip-pointed” their brushes, swallowing poison while unknowingly lighting their way to tragedy, is gut-wrenching in a way that sticks to your ribs far longer than the glow-in-the-dark paint stuck to theirs. As the narrative shifts, so too does the tone, moving from naïve joy to the corporate equivalent of an ice bath. The businesses, confronted with the obvious truth that their workers were wasting away like candles left in a furnace, responded not with humanity or decency but with the kind of cold-hearted abdication of responsibility that would make even Ebenezer Scrooge raise an eyebrow. Every excuse, every denial, every instance of “surely it must be something else killing them” reads like a masterclass in how not to have a soul. The management, faced with suffering they had the power to alleviate, instead chose the noble route of circling wagons, covering tracks, and gaslighting the very people whose bones were literally crumbling. And yet, Moore’s writing never lets the women fade into victimhood. The bravery, tenacity, and sheer refusal to be silenced is the glowing core of the story, a reminder that sometimes justice doesn’t arrive neatly packaged but dragged in, kicking and screaming, by those who simply won’t quit. This book is infuriating, inspiring, heartbreaking, and oddly luminous; an unforgettable story of innocence lost and courage found, told with a sharpness that makes the injustice burn as brightly as the paint once did.

This is a book worth reading a couple times over, just to remind oneself that woman’s suffrage, corporate abuse and lies took on many different forms. The author takes us on a journey where young girls are lured to painting dials by the money and status. When these young workers start getting sick, some are misdiagnosed (by a dentist) that they are suffering from phosy jaw or worse syphilis. Some young woman lose jaws, teeth and one her arm to painting dials. The author covers the trial to expose the risks of dial painting and the walls the woman came up against. From the Radium Dial Company vs Catherine Donahue lawsuit; “Suddenly”, a report later wrote of seeing Tom and Catherine together, I forgot her crumbled teed, the shattered jaws…I forgot the tragic remnants that radium poisoning left of a once-handsome woman…I saw briefly (instead) the soul that hold her husband’s love —a love grown blind to the the fragile shell of a woman that is all other people see.” A journalist comments during Catherine’s trial against the dial company. It’s a very good read and hard to put down, one can’t help but wonder if the former factory work places are radio active.

Kate Moore did such an amazing job writing this very sad and horrifying book. It could have been very dry, but she brought these young women, and their families to life! Their story illustrated how hard women had to fight and how hard we still fight in a man's world. And, how businesses cared, and still care, more for money than human life. Such a great book!

Kate Moore's historical bestseller, THE RADIUM GIRLS: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, is not an easy read, and there are some who will not enjoy it. It is a dark story, and it can't be otherwise. Radium was a new and lauded discovery, and several factories opened in the US just before World War I to manufacture watch dials that would glow in the dark, a boon to soldiers in the trenches. Many young women signed up to work in these factories and found the shining radium fascinating. What wasn't known at the time was that radium could also kill. So in handling radium infused paint, even tipping the brushes in their mouths, these young women exposed themselves to a material that would destroy them over the years and take their lives--long after they stopped working for the dial companies. When they realized what had been done to them, some of the women--now married with families--fought for compensation for the health they had lost. This battle brought the radium issue out into the open, thus changing laws and history. When radium was used to make the atomic bomb in World War II, protections were provided to workers and the public. While these young women gave their lives, they may have saved the future of the planet. The author tells the story in great detail, which I found quite intriguing, even though the situation was tragic for the young women involved. I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to understand this complex chapter in our nation's history.

This was an amazing read and listen. I had been eyeballing this book for several months after I heard of it's release on NPR. However, every time I'd go to look for it at Books-a-Million, it'd be $30; the Kindle e-book wasn't that much cheaper at $26. I was lucky that I happened to log into Amazon during the Kindle's 10th Anniversary Book Sale, and was able to snag the book for $2! I went ahead and later got the audible version, as well, so I could listen to it while my commute to and from work in the mornings. Kate Moore tales the true, historical account of the Radium Girls in a beautifully, hauntingly crafted narrative non-fiction. The Radium Girls were a group of women from the early 1900's who had begun working with luminescent paint, composed primarily of radium, in order to help with the war effort. They used this paint to coat hand and pocket watches, so that soldiers could tell the time despite whether or not it was dark. The public was enthralled with the idea of "glow in the dark" watches, and soon the company began manufacturing their products for public sale. The American Public was, to say the least, having a romance with 'radium', which was newly discovered at the time. The factory workers were encouraged to put the radium paint coated brushes in their mouth, in order to wet the brush without wasting as much of the product, in comparison to wiping the brush down or dipping it in water. The corporation swore that the radium was full of medicinal properties that the women were lucky to be exposed to, when handling the radium. Some even swore that it would make the women "more attractive". They were lying. The executives of these radium corporations knew that with every exposure to the radioactive paint, these women were signing their death warrants, unknowingly, in the name of capitalism and corporate production. The account of these women were horrifying, but was very well written. The non-fiction narrative read as well as many fiction books do, and had my attention from start to finish. I found it morbidly fascinating as a cancer patient, who has been exposed to several different radioactive isotopes in order to treat the disease. It was horrifying know that I had ingested material related to what these women had unknowingly been absorbing; Had to fight to keep myself from being a bit like a hypochondriac. What shocks me the most is the gall of these corporations, knowing full well that they were leading these women to a painful, slow death and having the audacity to lie publicly about it. Kate Moore's book is well worth the read, but just as a word of warning: when your curiosity begins getting the best of you, I'd not recommend you google images of 'jaw necrosis'. As for the audible narration of the text. I've read several complaints on here that the narrator repeatedly smacked her lips, breathed into the microphone, and slurred her words. I did not find this to be the case at all. I had no issues with the narrator whatsoever. While she was not the best narrator that I've ever listened to, Angela Brazil did a commendable job. I found her voice to be very pleasant, and that she enunciated her words perfectly clear. The only reason that she received a 4/5 rating from me was because I'm used to many narrators of non-fictional texts, striving to make each character recognizable different in sound. Brazil had generally one voice throughout the text. Nothing to be put off about, but not as creative as some audible narrators. I would absolutely recommend "Radium Girls" by Kate Moore, as well as the audible narration of the book, by Angelina Brazil.

The story of the radium girls is 100% worth the books, plays, movies, etc., however I wasn’t the biggest fan of this piece of literature. The author is commited to dig deep into the lives of the characters and to paint the picture of their personalities and personal struggles, and I applaud her for that, however I must confess it got at times too repetitive and slow. There were too many characters to keep track of, and too many chapters that I could have done without. The book goes into detail on the history of the radium companies, the women who worked there, the course of their horrific ailments and the long and at times unfair trials that they fought. I was left wanting to learn a bit more about the research and discoveries that happened in parallel around radium in the scientific community.