WOW. I have struggled writing this review, forming words that do the book justice. It is Heartbreaking, yet powerful. The cruel reality showing the evil side of capitalism, illustrating the worst form of corporate greed there is. When innocent lives are destroyed and scientific evidence is pushed under the rug and denied, just for profit. Through the girls stories, I was reminded to always question everything, especially when it comes to your health.

The book follows the lives of Radium factory workers, who painted radium watch dials in the early 1920s with the beautiful and new self-luminous paint. They were told that the paint was harmless, and told to "point" their brushes daily with their tongues, ingesting it. The girls started becoming sick, but the company kept denying that Radium was to blame, even destroying evidence.

I was engrossed in each girl's story. I was heartbroken, seeing them naively taken advantage of. I cried with them, got angry with them, and I became their ally, emotionally invested in their battle against the company that ruined their lives. I never heard of "The Radium Girls" before I started reading this book, and now I will never forget them

I didn't put this down. I've bought three copies to gvie away two. This is every bit as good as Hidden Figures and Rise of the Rocket Girls.

Fascinating look at the physical and legal plight of the young women hired to paint watch faces and aircraft gages with radium paint. A great look at the background of the establishment of OSHA and worker safety across the US.

The writing was very good, with Kate Moore drawing the reader right into the women's stories and emotions.

Highly recommended!

The Radium Girls starts off strong and is deeply fascinating. Who knew radium was lethal? Well, no one at the time. The author certainly does her research but I found myself bored near the end, it sort of just fizzled out. I got lost with all the names of all the women. Would totally recommend though if you interested in the history and don't need a page-turner!

One of the best books I've read this year. The individual stories are woven together brilliantly. Excellent narrative flow, even more impressive given that it's a nonfiction book involving legal proceedings (which often get very dry and tedious). Incredibly moving point in history that few know about.

Wow! What an excellent book! I don't think I ever heard of these "radium girls" and there was even a company here in Illinois that employed these dial painters, who used paint containing radium. Ths book was extremely well-researched and although this is nonfiction, most of this reads as fiction, but it is true. It was a page-turner and often kept me up somewhat later than I usually do. Definitely 5 stars.

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.

I met the author at Book Expo this year. This book is fabulous! So sad what the girls went through and what the company did to them. Wonderfully written. The amount of research that went into this book is evident. I bought a copy of the book for a friend, and also got one free from NetGalley, and another signed at Book Expo. The cover is gorgeous.

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.