Reviews tagging 'War'

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore

14 reviews

katie0528's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

4.75

This story follows the lives, careers, court battles, and deaths of "the Radium Girls," women who used radium to paint watches, clocks, and equipment starting just before World War I, and moving into World War II. Constantly lied to about the dangers of radium by the companies they worked for, countless women were poisoned by the radioactive material. A tragic tale of young women fighting for answers and justice, this book focuses on the women themselves, not just their battles in court, but the personal hardships so many of them had to endure.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Sexism, Terminal illness, Death, and Misogyny

Moderate: Gaslighting

Minor: Pregnancy, Infertility, War, and Miscarriage

tea_at_mole_end's review against another edition

dark inspiring sad slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting, Body horror, Medical content, Chronic illness, and Terminal illness

Moderate: Cancer, Miscarriage, Death, Sexism, and Grief

Minor: Abortion, Alcoholism, Infertility, Pregnancy, Child death, War, Classism, and Suicidal thoughts

punk_flower_child's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative sad slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Chronic illness, Death, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, Grief, Cancer, Medical trauma, and Terminal illness

Moderate: War, Pregnancy, and Miscarriage

Minor: Suicide, Domestic abuse, Abortion, and Suicidal thoughts

carriehaley89's review

dark informative inspiring sad slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail, Chronic illness, and Death

Moderate: Miscarriage

Minor: War

bookedandbusy's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative sad medium-paced

5.0

They deserved to be remembered 
This was an incredibly heartbreaking and thought provoking novel. These women fought so hard despite the extraordinary circumstances they faced. They didn’t give up even when they had nothing left.  Learning about the advancements in forensics, medicine, and law was fascinating, and reading about the women’s fight for justice was inspiring. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Infertility, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Terminal illness, Suicidal thoughts, Miscarriage, Cancer, Death, and Medical content

Moderate: War

alexxrose's review against another edition

dark informative sad slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Chronic illness, Death, and Medical content

Moderate: Miscarriage, Grief, and Cancer

Minor: Abortion, War, Pregnancy, and Domestic abuse

ashley_briana26's review

emotional informative inspiring medium-paced

5.0

This book is a respectful telling of the lives of the Radium Girls. I came into this knowing nothing about them except that they existed and I closed this book only two days later and I have a much better understanding of the situation and the girls. This takes them from a vague concept of workplace safety and transforms them into real women that lived, worked, suffered, and died. The respect the author has for these victims is evident in her writing. This is not a bland statement of facts but a real story that’s being told that makes it easy to read. I highly recommend. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Medical trauma, Murder, Death, Grief, Chronic illness, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, and Terminal illness

Minor: Miscarriage, Infertility, War, Abortion, and Death of parent

cuteasamuntin's review

emotional informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

I think the first time I cried while reading this was only a chapter or two in. At some point, I simply didn’t bother to wipe my eyes anymore. I found myself filled with righteous anger and furious anguish, unable to find my footing in the accustomed professional distance I have cultivated in my own career as a historian. Please note that the rest of this review contains spoilers consisting of readily-available historical information and references.

Going into this book, I had a passing familiarity with the Radium Girls and a pre-existing understanding of the long history of companies disregarding the welfare of their employees and customers in the name of profit. I thought I understood the Radium Girls’ role in the US developing stronger workers’ safety protections, accompanied by the description of teenage girls  painting their teeth and nails with radium paint so they would glow. I knew they were lied to and that they died, but I’d always had the vague impression that it was perhaps 20 or so young women who died of radiation poisoning before they reached 30.

Kate Moore did an incredible job of honoring the lives and memories of the many, many women who were lied to, irreparably harmed, and emotionally abused and gaslit by their employers from the moment their work began in the early 1920s through their deaths at ages ranging from their teens to their nineties. Moore’s rage and grief at the injustice done to the America’s “ghost girls” is palpable throughout. Unlike I’ve experienced with many other works of popular history, I found this to bolster, rather than detract from, the narrative as it unfolded. 

I was both professionally impressed and personally moved by Moore’s dedication to thorough research through compiling existing primary sources and performing her own oral history interviews of people related to the Radium Girls. She synthesized these sources into a cohesive and compelling narrative of US labor history. Moore clearly delineates between known facts and her own conjectures of intimate details or internal thoughts based on available evidence. Rather than distracting, I found Moore’s frequent integration of direct quotations from archival materials and her own interviews to be a powerful tool that also made me more willing to trust the points where she had to guess at missing details or the internal workings of the entities involved in this history.

While the work is densely packed with both immediately vital and contextually relevant but tangential information, I did not at any point find the major points obscured or the pacing to be slow or bogged down.

I find I have few words of my own to describe the companies who knew they were poisoning their employees and the towns around them, then lied, slandered, and cheated these people into their early, irradiated graves. Over 100 years later, we are still cleaning up after them. This book is a well-deserved memorial for the women whose pain and suffering led to better protections for workers and the entirety of the American public. May their memories be a blessing. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Grief, Body horror, Medical content, Terminal illness, Injury/Injury detail, Chronic illness, and Gaslighting

Minor: Bullying, Cancer, Miscarriage, War, Fire/Fire injury, Infertility, Blood, Misogyny, Death of parent, and Gore

Moderate to graphic descriptions of

the effects of radiation, dental and medical procedures, acute and chronic infections, privacy violations, radioactive pollution, and criminal neglect of worker safety.

milesss's review

dark emotional informative inspiring sad tense fast-paced

5.0

Multiple times while reading I was moved to tears. An incredible account I could hardly put down. Engaging and emotional with attention to detail and honesty.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Terminal illness, Sexism, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, and Cancer

Moderate: Grief, Medical content, Eating disorder, Infertility, Death of parent, Gaslighting, and Miscarriage

Minor: Abortion, War, and Suicidal thoughts

mondovertigo's review against another edition

dark informative sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage, Gaslighting, Death, Blood, Terminal illness, Chronic illness, Medical trauma, Medical content, Misogyny, Injury/Injury detail, Infertility, Grief, Gore, and Cancer

Moderate: War

Minor: Abortion