Book #108 of 2018:The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moor
Book #108 of 2018:The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate MooreA welcome spotlight on the factory workers who suffered radiation poisoning in the early 20th century, before modern workplace safety regulations were in place and before the dangers of working with radium were widely known. Author Kate Moore has done a valuable service in publicizing these young women and the shameless corporate agents who tried to deny responsibility for their suffering. It’s aching to read the details of how the workers suffered and died, and of how long it took for the survivors to finally win the slim justice of payment for their medical bills and the institution of new safety protocols.I often find it difficult to rate works of nonfiction, and I think this particular book would have benefited from a smaller cast of characters, as many of the individual stories are similar and it gets very hard to keep everyone’s name straight (especially on audio). Still, Moore has succeeded in bringing this forgotten history to light, and she makes it hard not to wonder which everyday practices today will at some point sound as horrifyingly reckless as licking a radiated paintbrush does now.★★★★☆ -- source link
#kate moore#booklr#bookblr#media log