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

Really interesting, heartbreaking book. That postscript... The strength and courage of these women to take on their former employer, against all odds, is just amazing.

This is a true horror story. Do not read before bedtime unless you want nightmares about jawbones literally falling apart and coming loose in a woman's mouth. While I think the book could have been a little shorter, it is a fascinating, sad and ultimately somewhat uplifting true story about the businesss world's willingness to lie, cover up and sacrifice women's lives for the sake of profit. While in the end the Radium Girls got some justice and set the stage for organizations like OSHA, the postscript and our own knowledge demonstrate that, in a lot of ways, not much has changed.

Next time I feel a little sick and don't feel like going to work, I'll remember Catherine Donohue, weighing less than 100 pounds and in constant pain, testifying at her bedside against the Radium Dial Company - and hopefully I'll buck up and stop whining.

If you do not feel anger on behalf of these women about 187 times, I don't know what to tell you. If after reading this you are not clear on why any argument about businesses regulated themselves is a load of manure, I don't know what to tell you.

These were young women, many in there teams, who dreamed of happy lives, only to have those lives destroyed through casual disregard. And when they seek justice, after spending all their savings, and the savings of their families, their former employers use every dirty trick, including lying, to deny them that justice.

Compelling read that will make you angry and break your heart.

Powerful and unsettling in its telling of these girls' stories. The details of the tragedy are framed using the stories from the girls themselves, which made it a pleasure to read. This story is sad, but it led to many things that hopefully prevents tragedies like this today. Or, it should anyway. The postscript from 1978 was upsetting.

I was thrilled to get the opportunity to talk with Katy Lynch of Sourcebooks while I was at BookExpo this year. She took the time to share lots of new books coming out from Sourcebooks. We talked a bit about my favorite genres, and I asked her which book she recommended for me the most. Katy didn't really hesitate; she put a copy of The Radium Girls in my hands.

With that kind of recommendation, Radium Girls became the first book I pulled from the 98 pounds of books I brought home from BookExpo. I'm so glad I did.

The Radium Girls is the story of young women, some as young as fourteen, who worked in factories during the 1920's and 1930's, painting the faces of watches. With radium. Oh yes, radium. To paint the tiny numbers, the girls had to put their paintbrushes in their mouths to make a fine point. All the while, the companies making huge profits from this work told the girls that the radium was harmless.

Kate Moore tells the stories of these girls and young women, as they move from happy employees making great money into women with terrifying health issues. It's a poignant and deeply moving book, and it is well told.

I highly recommend this book.

I'm a sucker for little chunks of history that mean something in a bigger context; it's probably why I'm addicted to all retellings of the Bletchley Park story. And that's how I feel about the Radium Girls – it's a story I already know from [b:The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York 7054123 The Poisoner's Handbook Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York Deborah Blum https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442933592s/7054123.jpg 7305202], and found fascinating there, but I find it to have endless depths and nuances, and so I jumped for a more in-depth exploration (and I would again.)With a backdrop of WWI, luminosity of watchfaces is a matter of life and death for soldiers. Fortunately, radioactive elements have recently been discovered, so women are paid to use radium to paint watch dials. Unfortunately, working with radium is a matter of life and death for the dialpainters...but no one seems to notice or care. It's a story about chemistry and the dual roles of chemical utility and chemical toxicity make in our lives. It's a story about feminism, and how women joined the workforce and were let in only around the edges. It's a story about our workplace rights that is still relevant in modern times – after all, it directly led to the development of OSHA. It's a story about medical mysteries and how doctors work through tracing disparate symptoms to a single underlying disease. It's a stunningly apropos tale of a society that does not care for the weak in its ranks and bankrupts them through their efforts to obtain medical care for societal-inflicted wounds.Kate Moore wanted more than that: she wanted a story that was really about the individual dialpainters, and to that end (according to the introduction, at least), she painstakingly interviews the families and friends of dozens of them. She wants them to be real people, rather than symbols. It's a deeply admirable goal. And it completely fell flat for me. By including what feels like at least 100 named dialpainters, I felt the impact was actually lessened, because I never got attached to any of them. Each has a tragic story, but it's really the same tragic story. So reading pages of “Jane Doe was a dialpainter. She loved her beautiful dress and her winning smile. She was dating John Doe. She was friends with other dialpainters, Sarah and Sally. They all lip-pointed, just like they were taught. Then her teeth starting falling out. They thought she had phosphorus jaw, but she didn't. Then she died. Mary Smith was a dialpainter...” got very (very, very) tedious. And then, honestly, I just got inured – once I knew every character introduced would die within 10 pages, I stopped caring who their friends were, or who they were dating.The latter parts of the book were better, especially the last part, where the book really focuses on a core group of painters from the Ottawa factor and the reader gets to know them and their personalities decently well. Even then, though, Moore tells us little about them except that they were “strong.” The women never came alive for me. Overall, I loved the topic. I spent a lot of time thinking about what I learned, and talking to people about radium and how we can reflect on that era. I respect what Moore was trying to do. On the other hand, I didn't actually enjoy reading this book. I spent 8 weeks reading this book. I usually read a book every 10 days, so that says a lot. I dreaded picking it up and treated it like a chore, especially the first half; the back half was better. This may be better as a physical book, where one can skim, but as an un-table-of-contented-eBook, it was pretty painful.Overall, 3.5 stars.

Fascinating and super sad. Also, I had to turn it off/scream loudly a few times so I didn't hear the descriptions of women's JAW BONES FALLING OUT OF THEIR MOUTHS. So if you can stomach that on occasion, check it out!