The Radium Girls, Kate Moore
The Radium Girls, Kate Moore
20 Rating(s)
List: $34.99 | Sale: $24.50
Club: $17.49

The Radium Girls
The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women

Author: Kate Moore

Narrator: Angela Brazil

Unabridged: 15 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/02/2017


Synopsis

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Drawing on previously unpublished sources—including diaries, letters, and court transcripts, as well as original interviews with the women's relatives—The Radium Girls is an intimate narrative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.

About Kate Moore

Kate Moore is a Sunday Times bestselling writer with more than a decade's experience in writing across varying genres, including memoir, biography, and history. She was the director of the critically acclaimed play about The Radium Girls called These Shining Lives.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Chelsea on December 05, 2017

Congratulations-winner of Best Historical & Biography 2017! I'm going to try and not cry while writing this review. I actually read this one back at the beginning of October, but I was too emotional to write a review straight away and have avoided it since. Sometimes I have trouble with emotions; for......more

Goodreads review by Yun on January 08, 2025

When radium was first discovered, no one really knew for sure what it did. Soon, however, companies latched onto its lucrative potential when it became known that radium mixed in paint had a glow-in-the-dark quality. Hundreds of girls were employed to paint watch dials and instrument panels with thi......more

Goodreads review by Emily on July 23, 2024

If you're looking to try reading more non-fiction this is a good one to try! It's not the most joyful subject but it's an interesting one (if enraging!). At around 1h into the audiobook all I could think was... this woman just got a piece of her jaw literally fall, this can get any worse... and it did......more

Goodreads review by Debra on March 26, 2018

4.5 Stars Imagine you have your first job. Imagine how proud you are. Or maybe it is not your first job, but it is a fun job where you get to socialize if you get your job done. A job that allows you to do something important for your country. Imagine you are helping your friends and sisters obtain a......more

Goodreads review by Peter on January 25, 2020

What a brilliant and interesting book on the greatest scandal in the watch industry ever. Here you come across the dangers of radium and dial painting. You'll read the shocking progression of the radium disease in the female workers and how their job turned into a nightmare. This is really moving. T......more