The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

The Radium Girls

by Kate Moore

'The importance of the brave and blighted dial-painters cannot be overstated.' Sunday Times

'A perfect blend of the historical, the scientific and the personal.' Bustle

'Thrilling and carefully crafted.' Mail on Sunday


Ordinary women in 1920s America.

All they wanted was the chance to shine.

Be careful what you wish for.

'The first thing we asked was, "Does this stuff hurt you?" And they said, "No." The company said that it wasn't dangerous, that we didn't need to be afraid.'

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Drawing on previously unpublished sources - including diaries, letters and court transcripts, as well as original interviews with the women's relatives - The Radium Girls is an intimate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

Reviewed by Veronica 🦦 on

5 of 5 stars

Share
**A-** | A provocative, heart-wrenching book that documents the brave women who fought for their lives against major corporations who cared little for anything else except for the profits being made by the radioactive substance, radium. “*Lip, dip, paint*”. These women shined bright thanks to radium, but they also suffered its poisonous consequences after ingesting the paint containing the radioactive substance. This book goes into the girls’ lives, smiles, struggles, pain, suffering, and then eventual deaths. It is not for the faint of heart, but this book should be required reading in US History courses.

“Lip, dip, paint.”

This line is repeated over and over through the book. The companies instructed the women to use this technique to reduce waste and to give the brushes a sharper point, thus allowing the numbers to be painted better, basically. For those companies, it was all about the profit and the bottom line. They didn’t care about safety standards. They didn’t care that the women working in those factories had lives. What it came down to was money.

“Lip, dip, paint.”

Every day those women worked in those factories, they ingested radium, completely unaware of the dangers of the substance until it was too late and it became a part of their very bones. Then, they not only had to fight for their lives but for their rights and for compensation from the very companies who put them in danger in the first place. To make matters worse, these companies *knowingly* delayed the trials, hoping that the women would die before they had to make the payouts. They brought in their own people — including a fake medical doctor (he had a PhD, not an MD) — to examine the women on their own terms to ensure the women got as little money as possible.

I could not put this book down once I found the time to sit and read for more than ten minutes at a time. Kate Moore did a fantastic job all around. I could tell that she did a **ton** of research to write this book. She left no stone unturned.

The book ripped open my chest and left me with an open wound.

I had briefly read about the Radium Girls back in high school when I had to do a project for AP Chem about radium so I had an idea about who they were and what happened to them. However, I didn’t know their *stories*. I didn’t know just how much they struggled and how much they suffered. I didn’t know their legacy beyond the horrific image of the radium jaw found on Google Images.

I’m glad I know now and I’m so glad that Moore didn’t sugarcoat anything. Even now as I type this review, my hands are shaking from the residual anger I felt while I was reading. No, this anger isn’t from the writing but from the actions of those greedy men from Radiant Dial Corporation and the United States Radium Corporation who ruined these women’s lives and tried to sacrifice them all for money.

Moore does a beautiful job in bringing these women and those around them to life. The writing was lively and full of emotions. Each chapter is filled with sentences that brought the past to the present not only due to the writing but due to the research that was put into this book. These women weren’t just names anymore. They were brave women who stood up for themselves and for each other against two giants. I came to admire them for their tenacity and their bravery. Some may say that it’s ridiculous that we had to read about what they were wearing, however, I completely disagree. Knowing what these women wore, what their favourite foods were, what they did in between shifts — details like this bring life to them.

I truly believe that this book should be required reading in US history courses. I think it’s time for US history teachers/professors to consider adding this book to their required reading list. Their actions lead to the foundations of OSHA and changed the lives of working Americans. They might not have fought a war. They might not have gone into the trenches. But these women started a revolution in their own way. They contributed to American society and yet, they’re not among the group of American women that we learn about. This should change.

Although this is not an easy book to read due to its content matter, it is well worth taking the time to read it nonetheless.

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • Finished reading
  • 27 August, 2019: Reviewed