I really enjoyed this book. I read it with my book club and the historical context it gave was horrible but very informative

Knowing what we know now about the effects of radium, this book was a must read for me. Radium was touted as the cure all and most fantastic discovery in the early 20th century. The story of the Radium Girls, is a hard book to read because of how dangerous we now know radium is. The girls trusted their employers and the many people saying radium was safe. Kate Moore tells the girls struggles with medical issues, the courts, and also the employment safety laws that were created.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers of this book for the opportunity to read this book for my honest review. 5 out of 5 stars!!

I spent the entire time reading this book shaking my head. Wincing as one girl after another lost a tooth and another tooth and had jaw bones removed and suffered leg pain …limping, amputations, bedridden and then painful deaths. Radium poisoning that infiltrated the factory workers and slowly destroyed them from the inside out. And for many years there was nobody to help them fight for their rights, nobody to stand up to big business, and weak men who hid the truth so business could prosper at the expense of The Radium Girls. Uplifting book it is not….If only Erin Brockovich was alive in the early 1900s.

The Radium Girls were mostly teenagers and in their 20s; they were lucky enough to land well paying jobs in the factories painting numbers on watches out of radium paint. They were told to put the brushes in their mouths to make it fine and pointy so unknowingly the girls were ingesting dangerous radium everyday. The substance got on their clothes and made them glow; they were covered in it by days end everyday and never knew it was harmful. The executives insisted the paint was safe and they repeatedly tested the women throughout the years to confirm they were all in good health.

Unfortunately, it was obvious their health was failing them and many of the test results did show the girls were radioactive but the businessmen covered it up and hid the reports so the lucrative watch dial business could continue. Sadly for the girls, repercussions did not physically show up right away and many of them reported health issues years after they left the factory.

Some of the girls tried to hire lawyers and doctors to vouch for their claims that the job caused them to get sick but for a long time nobody really was able to take on the big company’s powerful legal and medical team, so one by one, girls were using all their family’s money for lawyers, healthcare and then ultimately dying, leaving their families destitute.

Author Kate Moore tells the tragic history of the Radium companies and the legal battles through stories of these important women who worked hard, cared for their families and friends, suffered the unthinkable health issues and experienced financial drain. The Radium Girls deserve recognition for fighting the big companies who insisted Radium was safe and illegally covered up the truth as they knew it. They fought for themselves, and the women who would be exposed to toxic chemicals in the future.

The Radium Girls is a tribute to these hard working, strong women and the generous lawyer who fought hard for justice. “Radium had been known to be harmful since 1901. Every death since was unnecessary.”

I highly recommend this informative and thought provoking book. Parallels can be drawn to current day when we look at the number of cases of cancer where we have not been able to connect them to any one instigating cause. One big difference is our current ability to share information, research and case studies in real time via everyday technology so time is not lost. With so many people suffering, there continues to be much to do.

This book was so sad....I cried in my cubicle at work. I had never heard of the Radium Girls, but they are such an important part of history.

This is one of the best history books I've read in a long time. I really enjoyed how Kate Moore brought each of the women affected by the radium factory to life so that we can get a glimpse into this important step in creating safe labor laws in America.

What a devastating read. It's appalling the lengths the radium companies went to in order to protect their financial interests in radium. Scientists knew of the elements danger as early as 1912; yet, these companies did nothing to prevent or limit exposure to it. Once company denied the element's inherent toxicity and the effects of radiation as late as 1978!

I've known about the Radium Girls, but never knew much about their individual plights. I especially appreciated getting to learn more about painters Grace Fryer and Catherine Donahue, and their lawyers, Raymond Berry and Leonard Grossman. Their stories are, quite simply, the stuff of nightmares. Disintegrating bones, massive sarcomas, whole body parts falling off. It's awful to read, and it's even more awful to remember that a lot of their families went destitute as they went to doctor after doctor in a futile hope of finding a cure. All the while, the companies that poisoned them continued to gaslight them and insist that radium had nothing to do with their illness.

Despite their own failing bodies and the might of the companies, the girls fought back. And they won. Their motives for doing so were both practical (they needed the money to pay for their mounting medical bills) and altruistic (they wanted to protect the women who came after them). It's inspiring to hear all that they did for generations of workers after them: the medical physics research, the creation of OSHA, and the reduction of nuclear testing in our earth, sea and skies.

The history in this book is great and a must-read. I will say the actual writing was a bit obtrusive at times. The tone seemed to try and match the quick, sensationalist tone of the era. It works sometimes! by the time the trials actually rolled around, you get it. The sheer horror of what the women are going through and the companies' apparent callousness to them does inspire some rather artful editorializing. But sometimes, it doesn't work. At one point, we're told the women's disease had "foxed" the doctors. I'm not sure, but I'm assuming that's slang of the era. The text is also riddled with citations, parentheticals and footnotes. I get that Moore wanted to be thorough in citing her sources; I just wish she could have found a neater, cleaner way of doing so.

Also, I listened to the audiobook while I read. The narrator was ... interesting. I think she was going for that roaring '20s newsies vibe, but it didn't work all of the time. I got used to it, though. By the time I hit the quarter mark, it was fine. If you go that route, be sure to speed her up to at least 1.5; the narration is intolerably slow otherwise.

I definitely recommend this book if you like history, intriguing legal drama and medicine.

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore is an incredible non-fiction book by Kate Moore. This book won the Best Historical & Biography 2017 on Goodreads, and for good reason! Moore tells the stories of The Radium Girls, a group of young women who were dial painters during World War 1 and suffered excruciating and devastating effects from ingesting radium while working. The narration follows the courageous young women from when they are happy-go-lucky teenagers, happy to have scored a high paying job dial painting. At the time, Radium was a new discovery and everyone believed that Radium was good for you, so no precautions were taken to protect workers against the Radium. However, even as some of the women started having strange health consequences, they were still told that Radium was not harmful and the reasons they were all getting sick was not from their work. They were being lied to.

The rest of the book follows these courageous as they undergo painful, debilitating Radium side effects with no cure. Their jaws disintegrate, they grow sarcomas, they get weak, they are riddled with pain, their bones are becoming more and more brittle and yet no one believes them. They begin landmark cases in suing the Radium Dial companies that once employed them and are still saying they are innocent. We see all of the young women joining together in both New Jersey and Ottawa, Illinois as they suffer through fellow friends dying and sue their former employers to finally get justice and some money to help pay their massive medical bills.

What The Radium Girls did during this time period of the 1920s-1930s was unheard of at the time, and was monumental for women's and worker's rights. These women are not celebrated enough today and this amazing book helps feature these incredible women who suffered insurmountably.

Fantastic history of a little known American tragedy. It is hard to believe in today’s world that women could be treated so cruelly by their employers and with such wanton disregard for their life. This was an eye-opening account of those poor women and their crusade for recognition and justice. It is still infuriating all these years later, but at least this account of their torturous end has brought their story to light.

An interesting shocking story but book felt far too long with too many names. Only towards the end did you distinguish and connect with a few of the women.

This fantastic book almost needs its own genre--the historical fiction/nonfiction angle the author took made the story very endearing and sad, much more so than if it were straight nonfiction about these events. The nonfiction added the element of "these are real people who were affected by this mistreatment and neglect." As a public health professional and laboratory scientist, I found much of this book to be simply horrifying, for lack of better words. I understand that there was very little to no regulations implemented to protect workers from their workplace, but to read a story like this with likable characters, it almost felt like my friends were being unknowingly poisoned, and all I could do is pound my fists on the glass box I was stuck in while I had to keep watching. I intended to read this book and review it for my workplace blog in the "What we're reading" section, but at the time of reading, I had a difficult time giving a fair and balanced review that wasn't too politically charged.

I would love to read more from this author, and am thankful for the opportunity to have been one of the first to read this fascinating, enlightening, tragic story. It helped further strengthen my dedication to my career in protecting the health of the public, even if it means fighting against the current system.

This review is also available on Goodreads.

4.5 Stars!

The Radium Girls was a phenomenal read detailing the horrifying ordeal the dial painters went through to find justice and I found it to be a very engaging read.

This book follows two sets of women: those that worked in Orange, New Jersey at The United States Radium Corporation, and those that worked in Ottawa, Illinois at the Radium Dial Company. Despite the years between when these women worked for these companies, their situations were nearly identical. The dial painters were ignored when they raised concerns, they were assured their work was perfectly safe, and they were lied to.

I personally had never heard of the dial painters or what they went through until I discovered this book. It's horrifying to realize the events in this book actually happened and to read about what these women went through. One common thread throughout the book is how determined and strong the women were to find justice and to ensure that what happened to them wouldn't happen to anyone else. I admired the women's courage and their perseverance in spite of the odds stacked against them.

I'm not one for non-fiction usually but the writing in this book is incredibly engaging and at times it felt like I was reading a work of fiction. The book was ever dull and there were only a few occasions that were a bit information heavy. One aspect I really liked was that throughout the book there are personal snippets from the women's families about what the women were like. I loved these little touches as they made the women more real to me rather than them being some faceless person from the past.

The Radium Girls is definitely a worthwhile read and an important one as what these women accomplished managed to create real change to workers' rights. I highly recommend this book even if you're not a fan of non-fiction works as the writing is engaging enough while still getting the information across.

This book was boring. Just a recitation of facts. There really wasn't much storyline. I read a lot of history books and this one was disappointing. There needed to be better storytelling not just a recitation of facts.

What a fascinating story, one that is hard to believe is true looking at it from a modern perspective. The book is fast-paced, something that is difficult for many science-based historical accounts to do. This book will appeal to people who enjoyed "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" and "Hidden Figures".

This is both a very interesting and sad story that needed to be told. I found the story too repetitive and bogged down with minutia. This book could have been edited down about 100 pages. Important story but not the best read.

Not typically a fan of Nonfiction, I loved the story of The Radium girls! It read like a fiction because I found myself so enraptured by the story of how radium came to play such an impactful part of those lives. First as a way to help but then ended up destroying those lives and the covered up secrets that were trying to escape.

Excellent story about a little-known topic in history. I enjoyed reading about the specific women who worked in the watch-painting factory. Fans of history books or people who enjoy reading about women's history and issues would enjoy the book.

Fantastic and captivating book about a fascinating and very much forgotten part of history. The story is clear and the facts are well presented, but not dry. It's very easy to connect with these girls and get involved in their story!

This was an amazing book about women who aren’t very known but continue to impact the world we live and work in today. Kate Moore does an amazing job researching and writing about the brave young women that changed our world.

Fascinating book. Couldn’t put it down. The bravery of these girls in the face of tremendous adversity and pain is unbelievable.

This is the hidden story of the women who made things with Radium, which we now know is horrible for us. They were told to put it in their mouths! They glowed with they went home! They were told they it was safe even though the companies know it wasn’t. This is the story of these women who ended up with cancer eating their bodies from the inside out and the fight for them to have their medical bills covers and in the end, their deaths. These women fought and fought so that others didn’t have to so that workers could have a safer working environment. This was a great book that told a silent piece of history that should be brought into the light.