The Radium Girls

The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women

De: Kate Moore

Narrado por: Angela Brazil

The year was 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Drawing on previously unpublished sources - including diaries, letters, and court transcripts as well as original interviews with the women's relatives - The Radium Girls is an intimate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 20s who themselves learned how to roar.

©2017 Kate Moore (P)2017 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Loved the story but...

I loved the story, the history in it, the shadiness of big business. Everything like that. The story was what compelled me to finish the book. The narrator on the other had was extremely difficult for me to handle. The reading was fine, speed and accent was fine. However you could hear every swallow, mouth movement and lip smack. It was so distracting and I could barely handle it. The editing of this was horrible. It seemed like every sentence you could hear it. So I could not listen to this with ear buds or else I would be so distracted and annoyed about it. Great story but should have just bought the book not the audio version

The Performance Is Terrible And I’ll Tell You Why

The pauses in between words are way too long and her emphasis in words seems odd. At first I thought it must be read by an AI because it seemed so irrationally exaggerated at the wrong words. After the first chapters though it started making a bit more sense but it was still too cheerily read for the context. I’m sure the writing itself doesn’t lend itself well and I believe she’s trying to exaggerate to make distinctions when there are quotes but it’s pretty awful. The story itself is interesting but the writing is rather lackluster.

WOW

I'm a retired RN who's also an advocate and history buff. This book more than kept me involved. I was previously unaware of the plight of the "Radium Girls " . It gave salaries, medical costs and settlements in the era they occurred as well as the costs in today's market. The narrator was so strong she reinforced the cause of The Radium Girls, their struggles and ultimate victory over big business. I admired their persistence, courage and how much they were able to change Workmens Compensation Law. That was a major accomplishment for the day and time and didn't focus on the lack of protection of just women but all exposed to work place poisoning. Would like to read more about these incidents. Such a book. I literally took it with me everywhere headphones, ear buds charger for the tablet and auxiliary cord.

The More Things Change. . .

If "the more things change, the more they remain the same" holds currency, this book proves it. Yes, we have better Worker's Compensation laws now. Yes, we can see progress, but also the lack of progress from yesteryear. The Radium Girls is well detailed, thorough, and instructive. At times, the detail is perhaps a bit more specific than necessary, but I would not edit it much. Sections on the courtroom interfaces are very instructive, as are the denials of problems by the employer. Medical care remains a problem now as it was then. Judicial and corporate failures reign for years, and technicalities can destroy the logic and humanity of urgent remedies, even today. This book is not irrelevant ancient history; precedent-based judicial logic without compassion, capitalist abuses, corruption, legal representation pitfalls, issues of settlement and swindling, all of these crimes happen still. Look to this volume as not a finished story. We have more to do, and the old way of doing things is too slow, too fraught with injustice, and has too many loopholes. Read this book and think about modern problems - from rainforest protection to health policies to family law. The narration is a comfortable listening experience on Audible. I recommend this book for policy-makers, judges, human rights activists, those concerned about health care reform, and I think it is required reading for hard-core capitalists to read but the blind will not see the meaning. The health impact of the radium painted products and product liability was not developed in the book. Perhaps that is another story.

Very important and yet very difficult emotionally

Difficult subject matter. Narrator reading was like reading to a kindergarten class. very choppy. awkward pauses

Incredible and Heartbreaking Story

Everyone should read about these terribly betrayed women. Especially anyone who has ever worked in a factory.

A Parable for Our Times

Before the Big Short, before big tobacco, there were other companies and industries that were too big to fail. The Radium industry ranked among them. A major economic powerhouse and employer, the radium painting-companies of New York and Illinois refused to admit culpability in the health problems of their many workers. Instead, they engaged in character assassination and prolonged litigation, waiting for their victims to die. They probably did not know the dangers of radium when they began using women to paint glow-in-the-dark products. However, as the book outlines the timeline of information flow, it becomes clear that they soon did know the dangers, but that the profits gained by sacrificing their workers proved too tempting. The women, their reputations, and their families were sacrificed to keep the profits flowing to the top and to provide jobs to the surrounding communities.

Why well-told history makes for the best stories.

An amazing story written with much care and respect for the book's characters. History makes for the best stories, and the story of the suffering and courage of these woman will stay with me for the rest of my life. I cannot recomend this book enough, not just because it was a great read, but also an amazing and insipring story nearly 100 years old and made relevant today in this time of efforts to relax laws and rules regarding worker safety, employer accountability and radiation exposure. The lessons in this story should never be forgotten.

A glowing portrait of history

I never knew about this and how haphazardly radium was used nor how carelessly and callously women were treated. This is something that I think should be included in history studies and not swept under the rug. These women deserve far better than what they are dealt. Women in general contribute more to society than they are given credit. This is a glowing example, with a halflife of 1,500 years, of how the concerns and needs of women got disregarded because men in power were obsessed with keeping that power and the money that came with it.

Radium Girls

Fabulous story, but the narrator kept swallowing and that wasn’t edited out. Narrator was good, it was just the editing process