Scan barcode
A review by rosemaryandrue
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore
dark
emotional
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Radium is a fad in early twentieth century America, and consequently makes for booming business for numerous large corporations. So when employees of the United States Radium Corporation start falling ill with a mysterious, horrific disease, the industry scrambles to cover things up.
I've heard the story of the Radium Girls before, but I did not really know the details of the struggles that the women went through, and how thoroughly they were betrayed by their employers. The author wrote in the afterword that she wanted to put the stories of the women at the center of the tale, and I thought she succeeded in this remarkably, really bringing home the horror of the situation. I also learned for the first time how these women contributed with their lives and deaths to the study and management of radioactive elements to this very day.
However, I thought the end was abrupt - after the death of Catherine Wolfe Donahue, we whizz through the subsequent court cases - I suppose because the endless appeals have been covered in depth elsewhere, but I wish we got some more detail there about how it was achieved.
I've heard the story of the Radium Girls before, but I did not really know the details of the struggles that the women went through, and how thoroughly they were betrayed by their employers. The author wrote in the afterword that she wanted to put the stories of the women at the center of the tale, and I thought she succeeded in this remarkably, really bringing home the horror of the situation. I also learned for the first time how these women contributed with their lives and deaths to the study and management of radioactive elements to this very day.
However, I thought the end was abrupt - after the death of Catherine Wolfe Donahue, we whizz through the subsequent court cases - I suppose because the endless appeals have been covered in depth elsewhere, but I wish we got some more detail there about how it was achieved.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Chronic illness, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, Death, Miscarriage, Sexism, Cancer, Infertility, Medical content, Terminal illness, and Medical trauma