The Radium Girls : The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
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4.4 • 73 Ratings
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- $26.99
Publisher Description
1917. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous—the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls.
As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses. The very thing that had made them feel alive—their work—was in fact slowly killing them: they had been poisoned by the radium paint. Yet their employers denied all responsibility. And so, in the face of unimaginable suffering—in the face of death—these courageous women refused to accept their fate quietly, and instead became determined to fight for justice.
Drawing on previously unpublished sources—including diaries, letters, and court transcripts, as well as original interviews with the women's relatives—The Radium Girls is an intimate narrative account of an unforgettable true story. It is the powerful tale of a group of ordinary women from the Roaring Twenties, who themselves learned how to roar.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This gripping history lesson uncovers one of the most shocking—and underreported—medical crises of the 20th century. After radium was discovered in 1898, its glow-in-the-dark quality started to be used to paint luminous dials onto watches and clocks, and the “radium girls” who did this full-time for the United States Radium Corporation had coveted jobs—until they started to get radiation poisoning. Journalist Kate Moore’s immersive writing explains why thousands of workers became ill and hundreds died—painters were instructed to sharpen their brushes to a point using their mouths, so they were actively ingesting the poisonous paint. Angela Brazil’s sympathetic narration makes the medical horrors many of the women went through feel even more heartbreaking. This story of what the radium girls had to endure to stand up against a powerful corporation is both fascinating and necessary.
Customer Reviews
Engaging, both narrative and narration
The book did more than relate the history of this tragic chapter in industry and women’s rights; it shined a spotlight on each of the women’s lives and the unbelievable suffering and exploitation they endured, while allowing us to have a peek at their personalities and individual experiences. Nothing can atone for the injustices dealt them, but giving them life and honouring their memories constitutes at least a small form of justice for them, which has been successfully achieved here. About the length: it’s an extraordinarily complex subject, and it needed to be explored thoroughly or not at all. About the narration: Brazil really nails it here. Her inflections and characterisations made me feel like she was there personally and came back to relay every significant detail and moment. I’m sure the spirits of the Radium Girls and their families are smiling upon both author and narrator, as well as anyone listening to this incredible story with interest and empathy.
Cool story, Bad Narrator
I want to start out by saying I absolutely love “The Woman They Could Not Silence,” by the same author so I dont think it’s the writing that’s the issue here. It’s possible that I would have enjoyed this had I read the physical version, but unfortunately, the audiobook was hard to get through. The woman’s voice was so over exaggerated in certain parts it was like nails on a chalk board. I hear “Pooooorrrr (insert name here)” in my nightmares. This is a very interesting historical event though, so I give it two stars. It’s possibly higher, however, the story seemed to drag on at certain points. I can’t tell if it was simply due to the narration or if it was just less engaging that the authors other work. I may give this one another go in the future and read the hard copy.
A sad but interesting piece of history
The beginning and end of this book were interesting and enlightening. But it was at least 10 or 11 hours too long.