Thanks to NetGalley and Source Books for the ARC copy of "The Radium Girls".by Kate Moore. Our library ordered it from my suggestion.

Oddly enough, I read this book weeks after reading "The Incredible Life of Henrietta Lacks" and even though the two events occurred at slightly different times, and in different geographical areas, it was hard not to notice the cancerous strings of similarity between the two histories.

I am all for healthy business and the progress of medicine and health, but it becomes more obvious that we are all a part of a horrible experiment assembled by a capitalistic society that has moved too far from humanity.

It is interesting to note that protections for humans that evolved from these tragic events are being rolled back for the convenience of escaping regulations, not caring if there is no one left to buy their poisoned goods.

What a world. Excellent story, and it remains in circulation through our library system.

Very detailed, personal story of the women who worked for Radium Dial in the early 1920s. What girl didn't want to work there? Pay was better than their own father's made, you worked with your best gals, you could wear your nice clothes, and at the end of the day, you GLOWED. Literally. The radium paint would get in their hair, on their clothes- some even painted their teeth and lips with it as a surprise for their beaus later that night. What no one knew was exposure to radium would lead to radium poisoning, and the painful, slow death of dozens of young women, in the prime of their lives.
This book is different than other books written about the Radium Girls. While it does go into great detail of the cover up and fights between owners, lawyers, and doctors, it also spends a great deal of time going over the individual girls themselves. Their friends, their loves, their families, and the agonizing deaths they had to endure.
While at times, the details were almost too minuscule and slowed the overall pace of the book, it is still a wonderful read.

This was a heart-wrenching read that had the end result of creating laws regarding the workplace. This book follows the women who worked with Radium in both Illinois and New Jersey at facilities that worked on timepieces and dials. The overwhelming mantra at both facilities was lip-dip-paint. These women were covered in powdered Radium and they were ingesting it without being told how harmful it was. Yet despite having teeth fall out and other ailments, these women still went to work. The pay was more than any other women were making at other places, so these were lucrative jobs to have. This book is about their fight for the employer to help them pay for the medical care they needed as a result of Radium poisoning.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book.

I had the opportunity to read The Radium Girls by Kate Moore through NetGalley. It was a disturbing and fascinating book. Although the dangerous properties of radium were known to the Curies who discovered it, there was a general denial by the population of its dangers. The companies that used radium to paint watch dials to make them glow in the dark did not give any warnings to their employees. Women would routinely drip paint brushes with radium into their mouths before applying the paint to the dials. When the women were finally examined after years of exposure, radium had penetrated so deeply into their tissues they literally glowed in the dark.

The author lays out a timeline of the commercial use of radium. She introduces the women who worked painting the dails. She details their health and lives before starting to work at the plant. Ms. Moore also explains the process in which different workers in different positions were exposed. As the workers begin to show signs of various illness, they sought help from a medical field that did not understand radiation poisoning. Many girls were unable to work anymore due to illness. The statute of limitations for work related illnesses was only five months. By the point the women began to realize their illness was work related, more than five months had passed since they were employed.

The book is fascinating in the wonderful way Ms. Moore makes the women truly present. The reader begins to care about the women because of the wonderful way Ms. Moore tells their story. You feel their frustration with not being able to find answers as they are suffering greatly. You admire their persistence in pursuing a legal case to stop the company’s negligence.

The book is disturbing in the level of the cover up by the company. The smear campaign included telling the public that the real cause of the illnesses was syphilis. They painted the women as suffering from a venereal disease and ruined their reputations. The legal system was a Goliath that they sick women needed to defeat.

I recommend reading The Radium Girls. Like HIdden Figures, it is a book that tells a story that we need to know. We need to hear about these women who had the presence of mind to document their stories and make sure their stories were shared from generation to generation. Laws now in place to protect employees and give them access to information about dangerous conditions are because of the legal challenges of women. That is their legacy.

The audio version is narrated by Angela Brazil. I obtained it through Hoopla Digital and my local library system. Ms. Brazil does a nice job.

Radium Girls delves into the the glossed-over history of the "lucky" WWI factory girls to obtain the coveted positions as watch-face painters. The book is equally fascinating and gruesome as more and more young women succumb to the true horror of radium-induced illness and death. I had to put the book down several times due to how truly horrible their stories are. The piece is meticulously researched and absolutely riveting. Kudos to Moore for the exposing this often-buried, but incredibly important part of our collective history.

I found this book is so sad and heartbreaking, an eye opening for me at the same time. I had never heard of the radium girls and this book explain them so well. I was angry, sad and hurt while reading this book. Not an easy book to read.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Well written, compelling read documenting the story of the women who worked with radium and then who became seriously ill.

I never expected a nonfiction novel to be so moving and gripping. I could not read this novel in one sitting; I had to take multiple pauses because it was just so emotional. I didn't know much about this topic before I began reading. I had just thought that this was an interesting event that involved radium, a substance I'm familiar with through my course work. I got so much more than that through this book. The author creates a vivid story that looks at the lives of all of these women, full of their hopes and dreams and despairs. It shows all of the different people involved that either hindered or aided in justice being meted out. There was so much courage and strength portrayed here and the author made the reader care about every single woman mentioned in the story; they weren't just names but real people that I could connect with. While the novel was definitely more in favor of the women than the radium companies (which totally makes sense!), I was happy to see that the author did take into account the reasons why the companies did what they did; it didn't make me sympathetic to them on any account but it did make an attempt to give a more well-rounded picture of the scandal. This was a gripping story where I was on the edge of my seat, wondering how the women would get past each obstacle thrown in their way. The best thing about this story was the message of perseverance and hope and bravery that these women showed in every facet of their lives; they may have been dying but they wouldn't give up on living and fighting. It made me feel so proud to see all that they accomplished even after facing such adversity. I can honestly say that I have never felt this emotionally invested in a novel before. What an amazing story and the author did such a brilliant job of making it relevant and appealing to the masses. This is definitely a nonfiction book you don't want to miss out on!

A riveting and thoroughly researched history of the young American women whose lives were irreversibly changed by radium. During World War I, dozens of young women, some still teenagers, were hired to paint dials numbers and hands with a magical substance called radium. No one told them it was toxic. The numbers and hands were so small, the girls only had one option to get the brush fine enough to paint them properly: put them in their mouths.

Lip, dip, paint. Over and over again.

When the girls started getting sick, no one could figure out the cause. It took some time before anyone even considered that what they did at the factory could be the cause. And when even a hint of blame was placed on the radium, the company worked as hard as it could to divert the blame to something, anything else.

It took decades for the young women, many of whom had died horrible, painful deaths decades before they were meant to pass, to get justice. Moore tells the never-before-heard story in painstaking detail. Truly an incredible book.

This book can be a very hard read. That should be expected given the content: a number of women who were unknowingly poisoned by their workplace. But the room Kate Moore gives the women's stories, the descriptions of their illnesses, is heartbreaking. At times, the sheer number of women affected is overwhelming, yet even if all that is taken away is the magnitude of the Radium Corporations indifference to the suffering of their former workers, and the lengths the women were willing to go to make things right, I think this book is a success.

These true stories about the radium poisoning suffered by workers, almost all women, in the clock and instrument making industry's early days tell the sad story of workplace dangers and the consequences of not knowing or accepting the hazards. The Radium Girls also relates one of the earliest cases of employers being held responsible for not protecting their workers. Their tragic stories influenced the laws in this country to better protect workers.

I managed to finish this book in one of my off days because it was absolutely gripping and once again, I'm shocked by how little I know (everyone should know about this!)

During WWI, there were radium companies that employed girls (often teenagers or just out of their teens!) to paint dials with radium. The pay was by piece, which meant that the very skilled could take home quite a lot, and the girls quickly grew to be very close. Plus, America was in the midst of a radium craze where anything radium was considered to be healthy. So the fact that this girls were in contact with so much radium they glowed in the dark was an added bonus, right?

Wrong.

Radium is a radioactive substance and prolonged exposure to it killed many of these girls. The deaths were slow and painful, as their bones crumbled and they developed cancer (many of the girls' jawbones broke and their wounds wouldn't heal). The radium poisoning was made worse by the fact that these women used their mouths to help shape the brushes that were dipped in radium. So not only were they covered in radium, they were ingesting it! And because radium was so new and there was so little research, the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with them at first. When they did, however, the company that employed them denied all responsibility and did their best not to pay them compensation.

But these women were brave and tenacious, despite all the pain they were in, and they fought the companies in the courts and basically helped change safety standards, laws, and raised awareness of the dangers of radium. Oh, and their work helped saved the lives of soldiers during the war so they were basically heroes many times over.

The radium girls is an engrossing, well-written book that focuses on the girls and their stories. The author has clearly done a lot of research, and she has managed to tell the story of the individual girls without losing sight of the broader picture. Although the book is fairly long, it felt short and I just couldn't put it down. I'd recommend this to EVERYONE because it is a story that needs to be heard.

Disclaimer: I got a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review.

This is the one non-fiction book of 2017 that everyone needs to read.

Kate Moore’s well-researched true story tells us of the lives of the “shining girls” condersided the luckiest girls alive to have found the most coveted jobs using the “wonder” substance radium to paint dials. We learn of their feelings of joy, excitement, and independence at having such glamorous jobs, to them becoming ill and their bodies starting to deteriorate and then some to their deaths. To others realizing their jobs are causing their illness, to their fight against the companies and their legal battles and then for some realizing they are going to die.

Moore doesn’t shy away from the vivid details of the agonizing deaths and suffering the women went through and it’s not for the faint hearted. I think that might be me as I found the torment they went through relentless and their agonizing suffering and the deaths after deaths started to become too overwhelming for me. Some of what I was reading just became a blur to me and at times I just wanted to get through the book.
As much as the girls suffering broke my heart, the greed, dishonesty and the refusal to protect the young women from the danger was shocking and angered me.

I think Radium Girls was one of the most unsettling books I have read and even though I did not enjoy it, I am glad I read it. The courage and tenacity of the women is an important story that needed to be told and Kate Moore is remarkable to have told it and honoring the women and their deaths by doing so.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher Sourcebooks for a copy to read and review.

t's the early twentieth century, radium has just been discovered and is touted as a miracle and wonder drug of sort. It can be found in everyday products such as lotion and tonic water but this element hides it's secret and the young women who work in the radium-dial factors are to become it's victim of a horrible, painful death.

A dial painting factory opens up in different parts of the United States. It pays well and many young women jump at the opportunity for work. It's simple enough they used brushes to put luminescence onto dials of watches using a practice of lip pointing. This practice of putting the brush in between you lips to make the end pointy before painting the dials results in countless deaths.

The company knew that radium wasn't a safe element, yet they reassured works over and over again that they would not be harmed. Women who worked for the company began experiencing a variety of issues most of them started with an unbearable pain in the jaw. Treatment made things worse and eventually pieces of the jaw would break off. Women's bodies were ravaged with tumors depending on where radium settled in the body and bones.

The company denied responsibility and lawsuits unfolded. Read Moore's "The Radium Girls" to learn about this seemingly forgotten piece of US history. Be prepared to be angry and feel anguish for the victims and their family members.

Moore has done an excellent job of re-accounting the life stories from the women who were harmed extensively by radium. This book is well researched and easy to read!

A horrifying but true story of girls who painted with radium and were never told of the extreme danger of working with this radioactive substance. Despite their bodies literally falling apart and the excruciating pain they were constantly in (many of the girls literally had their jaw bones fall out of their heads), the girls persisted against a corporation and a legal system that had little to no care for them, often labeling the girls as having STDs and submitting them to public shame instead of admitting they were radioactive. Despite everything, they persisted.

This narrative in this book is a bit inconsistent, but the incredibly compelling story makes it worth reading. Prepare to be angry at the greed of corporate America.

"According to the author, there have only been two other biographies written about the struggle of the collective “Radium Girls” to fight for justice from their unsafe working conditions, but none of them really told the stories of the girls beyond their “anonymous moniker.”"

That is what Kate Moore sought to do.

The tone of The Radium Girls reminded me a little of Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures (mini-review here). In both, the authors sought to add a personal touch to each of these women’s lives as they told of their struggles to be heard. Hidden Figures gives an account of the women instrumental in working toward breaking the color barrier to be taken seriously as mathematicians, not only at NASA but across the nation. The Radium Girls tells of a brave group of women fighting to be heard (and believed) that they were suffering and dying from deadly radium poisoning, and their battles through the courts to get compensation for their growing medical debts.

The author held little back in describing some of the medical conditions of these women. Not for the squeamish. The horrors these women had to go through – losing their teeth, their jaw bones literally cracking and falling out in pieces, and the constant pain (in backs, knees, arms, feet, etc.) – is quite literally terrifying.

And even through their suffering, they fought. They fought for justice for themselves, for their friends, for their sisters. And, eventually, they won.

"“I always admired their strength,” said Catherine Donohue’s great niece, “to stand up and unite.”
And, united, they triumphed. Through their friendships, through their refusal to give up and through their sheer spirit, the radium girls left us all an extraordinary legacy. They did not die in vain.
They made every second count."

Although not an easy fight, the “Radium Girls” prevailed, in the end.

Even though many of the girls did not live long enough to get their own personal justice, their strength and resilience through their countless lawsuits provided safe working conditions for others who came after them, like those working on the Manhattan Project.

"An official of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) wrote: “If it hadn’t been for these dial-painters, the [Manhattan] project’s management could have reasonably rejected the extreme precautions that were urged on it and thousands of workers might well have been, and might still be, in great danger.” The women had been, officials say, “invaluable.”"

This story is hard to hear, but it is a story that must be told so that history does not repeat itself.

It was horrifying to read to what lengths some companies would go through to keep themselves afloat, putting profit before their own loyal workers, and how willfully malicious they could be. NEVER should a company put their profits above the health and safety of their employees. It’s despicable.

Even as the men in charge learned of the dangers of radium, they refused to believe (or admit) that it was harmful to their employees, and thus refused to implement costly safety precautions to improve working conditions. Many of these cases could have been prevented if upper management had cared more about their workers’ safety.

But, hindsight is 20/20.

This was a really interesting read, and I think the author did a great job of incorporating some of the personal triumphs of the girls – friendships, marriages, children – with the harsh realities the girls were facing. Even though I knew the general outcome, the way the author wrote and organized the chain of events made me care about these girls from the past and learn how they got justice and recompense.

They suffered from radium poisoning, they fought a groundbreaking case, and they ultimately prevailed and found justice, though not in time to benefit all those girls affected.It is a powerfully resounding story of determination even in the face of adversity, and it's a story that needs to be told.

I’d give this book an overall rating of 4.5/5 stars for the quality of writing and bringing to light the historical significance of these strong girls who fought so hard for justice. Thank you to NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS (non-fiction) for a copy of this eBook in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to read this ARC of The Radium Girls.

I picture myself as a girl in my young twenties. The men are away, our country is in a time of war. And then I picture myself getting this INCREDIBLE job painting watch dials in a factory with my close friends and sisters at the Radium facility. This is a coveted job that pays well, especially considering the current circumstances. Not to mention it's fun! Me and my co workers laugh and joke as we twirl the paint brush between our lips, dip it into radium powder, and paint away. The glow that comes from our bodies after a long day of work makes us feel pretty, exciting and so lucky to have such an exclusive job.

And then I picture myself wondering why I have pain in my teeth and jaw. My joints aren't what they used to be, but I'm only twenty three. My friends all seem to be either losing weight, worrying about forming lumps in their bodies, or just overall feeling sickly. The Radium factory swears that there is no harm in working with the Radium paint, and that the "lip/dip" technique really is the most effective way to paint those dials.

Oh my goodness, what a read! I feel as though I've climbed a mountain. This is a portion of our history that I had never heard of. It also makes me so appreciative of our modern day laws that serve to protect employees and INFORM them when something is potentially harmful. I can't even imagine what those poor girls, who had such youth and promise, went through to help our country form those laws.

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women
by Kate Moore

"What radium means to us today is a great romance in itself, but what it may mean to us tomorrow, no man can foretell." -- Dr. Sabin von Sochocky, founder of the Radium Luminous Material Corporation.

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore is a powerful and heart-breaking story about seventeen young girls who worked in radium-dial painting factories in the early 1900's where they painted luminous dials on watches and clocks. The teenagers felt they had landed a glamorous job of a lifetime while others were jealous of their high wages and the fact that they glowed like heavenly beings or angels.

Everyone was told radium was healthy, some would say a miracle, and they were encouraged to drink it to cure many illnesses. Soon it would be discovered by many of the scientists working with radium that the “Liquid Sunshine” could indeed be very dangerous.

Katherine Schaub was trained by twenty-year-old Mae Cubberly. Using very fine paintbrushes, she instructed Katherine in the technique that all of the dial painters were taught. Lip-pointing: putting the brushes in their mouths to make the tip finer, a technique learned from girls who formerly worked in china-painting factories. Mae even lets her know that the radium would not hurt them, if anything it would be beneficial. Lip…Dip…Paint.

When working in the “darkroom,” Katherine would call in workers, and could see the signs of the luminous paint on the worker, on the clothes, on the lips, on face and hands, shining. The girls painted on left over paint and went in the darkroom to see it glow and laugh at the results.

Demand increased with the war. The company opened a plant in Orange, New Jersey, not too far from the Newark factory. The company expanded right into the middle of a residential neighborhood, and some of the new workers hired lived there.

In the early 1920s, some girls left the radium company. Some of the girls began to complain of being tired and having mysterious and unrelenting pains. (Keep in mind that the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, was only ratified in 1920. In a world dominated by men, these mysterious illnesses were cast off as frivolous, “women’s complaints.”)

Heartbreaking as it is, these stories are about women, who though physically weakened, found the strength and determination to do what needed to be done. Their buried skeletons
contain radium which will continue to glow for 1,600 years.

This is a well-researched story. I had never heard of the Radium Girls, but this compelling non-fiction account of another era is a book I could not put down. I was caught up in the evolution of the rights of the average worker, but especially those working women whose voices they tried to suppress and invalidate.

I received an ARC from netgalley in exchange for the promise of a fair review.

Patricia Keefe