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Moore, Kate

WORK TITLE: The Radium Girls
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.kate-moore.com/
CITY: London, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British

http://www.kate-moore.com/writing/4583697052 * http://www.npr.org/2017/04/22/525063024/dark-lives-of-the-radium-girls-left-a-bright-legacy-for-workers-science * https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/radium-girls-kate-moore/515685/

RESEARCHER NOTES:

PERSONAL EDUCATION:

University of Warwick, B.A. (with honors), 2001.

ADDRESS

  • Home - London, England.

CAREER

Writer and editor. Contender Books, project coordinator, 2003-04; Michael O’Mara Books, editor, 2004-07, commissioning editor, 2007-11; Penguin Random House UK, editorial director, 2011-14; independent editorial consultant, 2014—.

WRITINGS

  • NONFICTION
  • Roses Are Red: A Book for Lovers, Michael O'Mara Books (London, England), 2011
  • Scone with the Wind: Cakes and Bakes with a Literary Twist, Virgin Books (London, England), 2015
  • Felix the Railway Cat, Penguin (London, England), 2017
  • The Radium Girls: They Paid with Their Lives, Their Final Fight Was for Justice, Simon & Schuster (London, England), , published as The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, Sourcebooks (Naperville, IL), .

Also author of children’s books.

SIDELIGHTS

Prolific nonfiction author Kate Moore is best known for her 2016 book The Radium Girls: They Paid with Their Lives, Their Final Fight Was for Justice. The volume was published originally in England and then in the United States as The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women. In the book, Moore details the tribulations of the women who worked as dial painters during the World War I era. With most of the men at war, factory jobs were opened to women, and the “Radium Girls” were hired to paint glow-in-the-dark watch dials and mechanical panels with radium. The women were trained to lick the radium-coated brushes to create a fine point, essentially speeding their exposure to the highly poisonous substance. The factory workers, though, were assured that radium was harmless. 

As the book unfolds, Moore profiles several individual radium girls, and she charts the terrible side effects each suffered. Symptoms included sore joints, glowing and thinned skin, rotting bones and teeth, and tumors. Many women died, and those who suffered were ignored by their employers. Moore recounts that it took twenty years of trials before the women received even a small amount of justice, but by then many had died.

Discussing her decision to write the book in an Atlantic Online interview, Moore told Sarah Zhang: “I read other books about the girls, and I thought: ‘Why is there no book that tells the women’s story, that focuses on their journey? What were they were like?’” Moored added: “Other books describe the story and what happened to them, but you don’t know that Grace worked in a bank and was very intelligent. You don’t know that Albina grieved because she lost all of her children and wasn’t able to have the family she wanted. You don’t know that Edna had a little terrier dog. … What I really wanted to do was bring them to life. It’s telling the story from their perspective. I went to the towns. I stood in front of Catherine Donohue’s house.”

Reviews of The Radium Girls were largely positive, and a Publishers Weekly critic announced that the book “moves seamlessly back and forth between daily struggles in the factory—and later in the courtroom—and the world-shaking events that brought booming business to radium factories in 1917. … The book’s marvelous interplay of macro and micro details required years of research-including tracking down many living relatives of the radium girls—and a novelist’s ability to create a lived environment out of those facts.” Booklist correspondent Stacy Shaw was also impressed, and she stated that Moore “writes in a highly readable, narrative style, and her chronicle of these inspirational women’s lives is sure to provoke discussion—and outrage.” 

As Chad E. Statler put it in Library Journal, The Radium Girls is “a must read for anyone interested in American and women’s history, as well as topics of law, health, and industrial safety.” Offering further applause in the online Atomic Fan Girl, a reviewer announced that “the medical detail here is staggering.  Not that it’s incomprehensible—far from it.  But that it’s horrifying.  As radium poisoning burned through bodies, the disease caused rotten teeth, bones that looked moth-eaten, bone tumors that broke through skin. … Moore pulls no punches here, in describing the girls as they declined, or the businesses, medical professionals, and lawyers that tried to cover things up.” The reviewer went on to advise: “Drop whatever you’re reading and pick this up. All apologies to authors everywhere, but The Radium Girls is powerful, stirring, and the kind of story you’ll be telling your friends about, and saying ‘I read that before the miniseries.’ Because if there’s any love and justice in this world, there will be a miniseries telling these stories.”

BIOCRIT

PERIODICALS

  • Booklist, March 15, 2017, Stacy Shaw, review of The Radium Girls.

  • Library Journal, February 15, 2017, Chad E. Statler, review of The Radium Girls.

  • Nature, June 23, 2016, Barbara Kiser, review of The Radium Girls.

  • Publishers Weekly, March 20, 2017, review of The Radium Girls; May 15, 2017, author profile and interview.

ONLINE

  • Atlantic Online, https://www.theatlantic.com/ (November 14, 2017), Sarah Zhang, author interview.

  • Atomic Fan Girl, https://atomicfangirl.com/ (November 14, 2017), review of The Radium Girls.

  • Kate Moore Website, http://www.kate-moore.com (November 13, 2017).

1. The radium girls : the dark story of America's shining women LCCN 2016040681 Type of material Book Personal name Moore, Kate (Writer and editor), author. Main title The radium girls : the dark story of America's shining women / Kate Moore. Published/Produced Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks, Inc., [2017] Projected pub date 1705 Description pages cm ISBN 9781492649359 (hardcover : alk. paper) Library of Congress Holdings Information not available. 2. The radium girls : they paid with their lives, their final fight was for justice LCCN 2016438511 Type of material Book Personal name Moore, Kate (Writer and editor), author. Main title The radium girls : they paid with their lives, their final fight was for justice / Kate Moore. Published/Produced London : Simon & Schuster, 2016. Description xiii, 465 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm ISBN 9781471147579 1471147576 9781471153877 1471153878 CALL NUMBER HD6067.2.U6 M66 2016 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE
  • Felix the Railway Cat - 2017 Penguin, London, United Kingdom
  • Scone with the Wind: Cakes and Bakes with a Literary Twist - 2015 Virgin Books, London, United Kingdom
  • Roses are Red - 2011 Michael O'Mara Books Ltd., London, United Kingdom
  • Atlantic - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/03/radium-girls-kate-moore/515685/

    The Girls With Radioactive Bones
    How the “radium girls” revealed the danger of radiation, and fought for safety standards

    Women sitting at desks with trays
    Young women painting at a factory of the United States Radium Corporation.Wikimedia Commons
    SARAH ZHANG MAR 1, 2017 SCIENCE
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    They would, quite literally, glow. During World War I and the years thereafter, dozens of teenage girls and young women worked in radium-dial factories, painting glow-in-the-dark numbers onto watches and airplane instruments. The paint got onto their hands, into their hair, and settled on their clothes. And so, they glowed.

    The young women had no reason to worry about radium then. The factories assured them it was safe. They were even taught to paint tiny numbers on the dials by licking their paintbrushes to a fine point. Plus, radium was supposed to be good for you. You could buy radium water, radium face cream, radium toothpaste, and even Radium Brand Creamery Butter. These products didn’t actually all contain the expensive and precious element, but the evocation of radium gave them a healthful glow.

    Then years later, after they stopped working the factories, the women started getting mysteriously ill. Their teeth started to fall out. Their jaw bones—brittle and degraded—broke at a light touch. Their hips locked into place. Their skin wouldn’t heal.

    The human body, it turns out, easily mistakes radium for calcium. So all that radium the women licked off of their paintbrushes actually ended up in their bones, like calcium would have. Their radium-filled bones were being bombarded with radiation from the inside.

    In the a new book titled The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, Kate Moore tells the story of how these dial painters took on the radium companies that made them sick—as they were dying of radium poisoning. Their lawsuits were key to reinforcing the U.S.’s nascent workplace safety standards. With their cautionary tales in mind, scientists on the Manhattan Project learned to protect themselves from radiation. A free ebook excerpt is available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Google Play, and the book comes out in the U.S. in May.

    I spoke to Moore about her book and the legacy of the dial painters. Our conversation, condensed and edited for clarity, is below.

    Sarah Zhang: Even a century later, reading about how radium glows in the dark sounds kind of magical. You write about these women coming home from the factory, covered in radium and glowing in the dark.

    Kate Moore: They were just entranced by it! It was luminous. It was emitting radioactivity. They thought of it as magical. In the book, I quote the husband of one of the girls who was a dial painter. He writes about seeing her smock from work hanging up in the bedroom and and it gives him the feeling of “a ghost bouncing around on the wall.” It's haunting that they were later nicknamed the “ghost girls” because of what happened.

    Charlotte Purcell, one of the painters, demonstrates the lip-pointing technique that they used to get the brushes to a fine point. Chicago Daily Times
    Zhang: But not everyone thought that radium was harmless, right? The dial painters were taught to lick their brushes, but the male lab technicians working for the very same company took precautions around radium. Was there a gender or class division at play?

    Moore: I absolutely think that’s right. I think they did think the girls were expendable and disposable. The thing that got me was when Arthur Roeder, the president of the United States Radium Corporation, was on the stand, he was asked, “What was the first case that you knew of?” He says, “I don't remember the name.” Essentially, you've killed these people and you can't remember their name. That for me was stunning.

    Zhang: You’ve said you first came across this story through These Shining Lives, a play about the dial painters, of which you ended up directing a production. Why did you then decide to write a nonfiction book?

    Moore: I read other books about the girls, and I thought: “Why is there no book that tells the women’s story, that focuses on their journey?” What were they were like? A play, of course, intimately delves into their lives, like the dynamic between Catherine—one of the dial painters who sued—and Tom Donohue, between husband and wife. What is like when a husband knows his wife is going to die and he has to look after the children?

    The other books describe the story and what happened to them, but you don't know that Grace worked in a bank and was very intelligent. You don't know that Albina grieved because she lost all of her children and wasn't able to have the family she wanted. You don't know that Edna had a little terrier dog.

    “They did think the girls were expendable and disposable.”
    Zhang: You also made a point to literally walk in their footsteps.

    Moore: What I really wanted to do was bring them to life. It's telling the story from their perspective. I went to the towns. I stood in front of Catherine Donohue's house. I walked to where the studio was to do her commute, as it were.

    And in Orange, New Jersey, I started at Quinta McDonald's house because I had their addresses from the court documents and walked to her sister Albina's house. It's steep slope on the way. It's obviously not hard to walk when you're healthy, but I just thought it would have been really hard when Quinta's leg was shorter than the other in the end, due to side effects from radium poisoning. She would have never been able to manage doing that.

    Zhang: All of the women you write about died years ago, but you quote them directly through their court testimonies, newspapers interviews, and letters. How did you find their personal letters?

    Moore: One of these was real discovery moment. Catherine Donohue’s letters I found in the LaSalle County Historical Museum, which is out in Utica, near Ottawa, Illinois, where one of the radium-dial factories was.

    I went to the museum and said I was here to research the radium girls. The exhibit was basically a picture of the girls at their desks and a copy of Claudia Clark’s book. I asked, “Are you sure there's not like something else?” The woman working there said, “I don't think so, but let me ask my boss.” Her boss said, “Oh yeah yeah, there's a file in the backroom if you care to have a look through.

    After Catherine Donohue (lying down) collapsed in the court room, the lawyers went to her house for a bedside hearing. Chicago Daily Times
    I got this file out that was just in the back office. There's a whole mix of stuff in there. I went further through, and I was going back in time. I pulled these things from a plastic wallet, and it's Catherine's real letters that had just been shut in the back room. I don't think anybody's really read them. I was recording myself reading the letters out loud, and I turned around and the woman working at the museum was transfixed. She said, “My god I had no idea this was here.”

    That was a really spine tingling moment, to be sitting with her real letters, seeing the imprint of the pencil in the paper. Because it isn't a proper archive like the National Archive. There's no white gloves or anything like that. I was literally holding the paper that Catherine Donohue touched.

    Zhang: In some ways these dial painters were unwitting subjects in an unwitting experiment. How did the data collected from their bodies end up contributing to our understanding of radiation?

    Moore: It was massive national news. So when the Manhattan Project got started, Glenn Seaborg, who was on the project, he wrote in his diary that he thought of the radium girls as he was walking through his laboratory with all its radioactive plutonium, and he didn't want the same thing to happen. He first had to find out if plutonium was similar to radium. Obviously, it did turn out that plutonium is biomedically very similar to radium.

    “That really shocked me. In the 1970s they're still denying what happened?”
    If the radium girls hadn't made their case so iconic, so demanding of attention from people, I'm sure, they wouldn’t have put safety standards in place for the Manhattan project. Because of the radium girls, they were happy for the safety standards to be in place, and they insisted that workers did follow them. I presume the workers themselves, they were probably aware of the potential dangers because of the girls and therefore did follow the procedures.

    Zhang: I hadn’t realized much resistance the dial painters faced when they sued the companies—not just from the companies but from the towns where they lived.

    Moore: That's right because now, we're like, “Go, the radium girls! They’re doing exactly the right thing in standing up for justice.” But at the time, they were shunned.

    The thing that really got me was reading about the post-war studies of the dial painters. Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory in the Center for Human Radiobiology interviewed a lot of the former workers. There are some quotes from the 1970s, saying “I think the girls were making it up.” “Peg Looney, she was sick to begin with. She was never in the best of health.” That really shocked me. In the 1970s they're still denying what happened? The girls won their case in the 1930s. The quote was from a man who worked at the company with them, and he still believed in 1970s that they were lying about it. I think the community shunning them shows just how brave they were because they flew in the face of what everyone was telling them to do. They refused to stay silent.

  • NPR - http://www.npr.org/2017/04/22/525063024/dark-lives-of-the-radium-girls-left-a-bright-legacy-for-workers-science

    Dark Lives Of 'The Radium Girls' Left A Bright Legacy For Workers, Science

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    April 22, 20178:14 AM ET
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    Mary Louise Kelly 2010
    MARY LOUISE KELLY
    The Radium Girls
    In the early days of the 20th century, the United States Radium Corporation had factories in New Jersey and Illinois, where they employed mostly women to paint watch and clock faces with their luminous radium paint. The paint got everywhere — hair, hands, clothes, and mouths.

    They were called the shining girls, because they quite literally glowed in the dark. And they were dying.

    Kate Moore's new book The Radium Girls is about the young women who were poisoned by the radium paint — and the five who sued United States Radium in a case that led to labor safety standards and workers' rights advances.

    Radioactivity wasn't well understood back then — in fact, radium was considered a wonder substance, and it turned up everywhere. "Radium truly was an international craze," Moore says. "It was in everything from cosmetics to food, and it very much had an allure to it."

    Interview Highlights
    Mae Keane, One Of The Last 'Radium Girls,' Dies At 107
    HEALTH
    Mae Keane, One Of The Last 'Radium Girls,' Dies At 107
    On the boost to the radium industry during World War I

    Soldiers needed watches, and people needed it for the planes and the trucks and so on, and so the dial painters, who were the Radium Girls, they were employed to paint all these dials with luminous radium paint, and they were taught to lip-point — so, to put their brushes between their lips to make a fine point for the detailed handiwork ... Mae Cubberley, who's one of the Radium Girls that I write about in the book, she said "The first thing we said was, 'Does this stuff hurt you?'" And their managers said no.

    On the beginnings of illness among the Radium Girls

    When the Radium Girls started to get sick, about five years after they started dial painting, the radium firms were determined that they would not link this insidious disease that was taking so long to show itself — and that was one of the problems the girls had.

    It would start quite innocently, actually — it would start perhaps with an aching limb, or a bad tooth ... but as the sickness developed and set in with the women, it got a lot more gruesome. All of their teeth would fall out, sometimes replaced by ulcers that would then seep pus constantly. And that aching limb would actually start to spontaneously fracture. And it might not be a limb, it might be their spine, it might be a jawbone.

    On the Radium Girls' effect on the Manhattan Project

    There was a direct link. Glenn Seaborg, who was a leading scientist on the Manhattan Project, literally wrote in his diary that he had a vision of the ghost girls, of the shining girls, the Radium Girls, and he therefore insisted that they had to do research into the materials that they were using on the Manhattan Project. It was found that they were biomedically very similar to radium, and therefore there were nonnegotiable safety guidelines put in place. And after the war, the Atomic Energy Commission officials actually said the Radium Girls were invaluable, because if it hadn't been for them, countless thousands of other workers would have been killed.

    On the lives of the surviving Radium Girls

    Through their willingness to allow scientists to probe their bodies, they have given us a store of knowledge about internal radiation that we simply would not otherwise have had if they weren't prepared to do that. And I think for many of the women, it was their gift to humanity, that we're still benefiting from today.

  • Kate Moore Home Page - http://www.kate-moore.com/writing/4583697052

    I am a multiple Sunday Times bestselling author with the ability to write across genres and for all purposes.
    I am the author of more than fifteen books across the genres of gift, humour, biography, history and children’s brand publishing. A multiple Sunday Times bestselling author, I am extremely versatile, equally adept at creating projects to clients’ briefs, ghostwriting memoirs and innovating my own ideas.

    My work has been published in national newspapers, translated into more than twelve languages, used in national advertising campaigns and performed at the South Bank Centre, London.

    Please contact me to discuss how I can write for you – be it corporate copywriting, book publishing or advertising.
    Reviews include...

    For The Radium Girls:

    ‘In this thrilling and carefully crafted book, Kate Moore tells the shocking story of how early 20th-century corporate and legal America set about silencing dozens of working-class women who had been systematically poisoned by radiation ... Moore [writes] so lyrically.
    FIVE STARS.’ Mail on Sunday

    ‘Moore has proved to be a prodigious researcher, drawing on unpublished sources and interviewing dozens of family [members] and descendants of the dial-painters ... The overall tone of this fascinating social history [is] Catherine Cookson meets Mad Men ... The importance of the brave and blighted dial-painters cannot be overstated.’ The Sunday Times

    ‘Heartbreaking ... What this book illustrates brilliantly is that battling for justice against big corporations isn’t easy ... [The radium girls’ story is] a terrible example of appalling injustice.’ BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour

    ‘Fascinating yet tragic. Book of the Week. FOUR STARS.’ The Sun

    ‘Moore writes with a sense of drama that carries one through the serpentine twists and turns of this tragic but ultimately uplifting story. She sees the trees for the wood: always at the centre of her narrative are the individual dial-painters, so the list of their names at the start of the book becomes a register of familiar, endearing ghosts.’ The Spectator

    ‘Moore’s well-researched narrative is written with clarity and a sympathetic voice that brings these figures and their struggles to life. A must-read. STARRED REVIEW.’ Library Journal

    ‘Powerful.’ Times Literary Supplement

    ‘A heartfelt … history.’ Sunday Telegraph

    ‘The Radium Girls by @KateBooks is a brilliant choice for our #BrainFood Book of the Week.’ BBC Science Focus magazine

    ‘Harrowing yet humane’ Saga magazine

    Reviews of other books:

    ‘We challenge you not to laugh out loud at this hilarious book.’ B magazine

    ‘This is a must-have!’ Hot Stars magazine

    ‘A billet-doux of a book, a pretty little volume ... a delightful gift book.’ Daily Mail

    ‘This is the perfect book for romantics everywhere ... a light-hearted but informative little gem.’ My Weekly

    ‘Full of swoon-worthy tips, quirky facts and amorous anecdotes, The Lovers’ Book is just the thing for born romantics.’ You & Your Wedding

    ‘A sure-fire hit with the tiny tots.’ Woman magazine

    ‘Although this is unofficial merchandise, there’s obviously been great care taken to make this book as reliable and trustworthy as it possibly can be.’ Book blogger

    ‘Personal and insightful ... a must-have for any fans.’ Book blogger

    dreamstime_xs_19456522
    My books include:

    The Radium Girls (No. 6 New York Times bestseller; published in the UK in June 2016 and in the US in April 2017)
    The first-ever narrative non-fiction account of the Radium Girls: the American women from the Roaring Twenties who were poisoned by the radium paint they worked with, and courageously fought for justice.

    The Radium Girls is a Junior Library Guild selection and a Great Lakes, Great Reads Award-Winner 2017. (History)

    Felix the Railway Cat (No. 3 Sunday Times bestseller)
    Full of funny and heart-warming stories, Felix the Railway Cat is the remarkable tale of a close-knit community and its amazing bond with a very special cat: Felix, the Senior Pest Controller of Huddersfield station, who has over 100,000 friends on Facebook.

    Scone with the Wind
    Humour meets cookery in this pun-tastic little gift book – written to a brief from a publisher. (Gift/Humour)

    Roses Are Red: A Book for Lovers (No. 3 Sunday Times bestseller; originally published as The Lovers’ Book)
    The perfect romance guide for Valentine’s Day. (Gift/Humour)

    Unofficial celebrity biography
    A full-length unauthorised biography written within two weeks to capitalise on the zeitgeist popularity of the subject, published under a pseudonym. (Biography/Pop culture)

    Meet Tractor Tom and Tractor Tom and the Music Festival
    Children’s storybooks and activity books in the Tractor Tom franchise (the forerunner character from the creators of Peppa Pig).

Kate Moore: Moore's action-packed history brings the true story of the radium girls, who were poisoned while working with radioactive paint in WWI-era factories, to life
Publishers Weekly. 264.20 (May 15, 2017): pS86.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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The story of the radium girls represents a watershed moment in the history of workers' rights and stands as a horrifying reminder of how big companies have taken advantage of their employees. It's a shocking story, though surprisingly few people know it: female workers at a series of U.S. factories were hired in the 1910s and 1920s to paint watch dials with luminous radium-infused paint, unknowingly contracting radium poisoning, As their illnesses came to light and their employers attempted cover-ups, legal battles raged, and one group of radium girls won a landmark 1938 ruling. But who were these women, really, behind the headlines and legal histories? Bestselling author Kate Moore delves into their lives in her finely researched nonfiction page-turner The Radium Girls.

Moore's goal in writing the book was to bring the historical record to life; "I wanted to walk in step with the women and describe each moment as though it were happening here and now," she says. "I hoped that, in this way, readers would be able to engage with the twists and turns of this decades-old history and to empathize with the individual radium girls, I wanted the women to feel like friends,"

Moore dives into the booming business of Radium Luminous Materials Corporation in early 20th-century Newark and Orange, N,J, She focuses her story on a few of those factories' new employees in the lead-up to World War I, particularly on Katherine Schaub in New Jersey and on Catherine Wolfe, who worked at a similar factory in Ottawa, III.

Only 14 years old when she landed the job, Katherine had no idea that the "liquid sunshine" she was painting on watch dials was actually poisoning her. Her employer and other companies who employed these girls ignored pleas to do more research into the effects of the paint after evidence suggesting its dangers was found. Women working in these factories were told to "lip-point" their brushes-dipping them into the radium solution, then putting the brushes in their mouths to create a fine tip-as they painted the dials, causing them to actually ingest the dangerous chemical. The book got its start while Moore was directing a play about the radium girls. Her interest was piqued, and she began to do deeper research, realizing that these particular women's powerful stories were collecting dust in archives, waiting to be told.

Coming to the stories through the play "had a massive impact" on how she decided to write the book, Moore says: "My actors and I strove to create well-rounded, believable characters, and I wanted to do the same with the book, I wanted to tell the story in a dramatic way: not dry and dusty, but gripping and page-turning. Most of all, I think, having got to know the women and their sacrifice through the play, I felt close to them and I wanted to bring their story to as wide an audience as possible."

The Radium Girls moves seamlessly back and forth between daily struggles in the factory--and later in the courtroom--and the world-shaking events that brought booming business to radium factories in 1917. With America entering World War I, demand for all things glow in the dark skyrocketed and the factories expanded. The book's marvelous interplay of macro and micro details required years of research-including tracking down many living relatives of the radium girls--and a novelist's ability to create a lived environment out of those facts. The book, Moore says, "reads like a novel, but it still has to be rooted in fact."

In fact, there was too much information to fit it all into the book, so Moore is building a website as an added resource for readers. The more information available the better, Moore believes, because factories are still exploiting their workers. "Companies don't adhere to safety standards; they obstruct investigations; there is negligence as well as orchestrated cover-ups. Today, I also think companies are closer to legislators than ever before, something I find worrying," Moore says. "I think when we read similar stories in the press today we need to remember that behind the headlines and statistics there are always human beings--and wildlife--whose lives are being irreparably damaged." As with the blockbuster films The Imitation Game and Hidden Figures, The Radium Girls brings a crucial historical moment to vivid life, standing as a cautionary tale for the present and future.

Women & War
Library Journal. 142.3 (Feb. 15, 2017): p100.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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[....]

* Moore, Kate. The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. Sourcebooks. May 2017.480p. photos, notes, bibliog. index. ISBN 9781492649359. $26.99; ebk. ISBN 9781492649366. HIST

Moore (Roses Are Red ...) details the tragic stories of dozens of young women employed as dial painters during World War I. Often the daughters of immigrants, these women were lured to these prestigious and well-paying jobs unaware of the dangers of the radioactive paint present in their workplace--which caused their bodies and clothes to glow, even outside of work. With America's entry into World War I, demand for painted dials and painters skyrocketed. Soon, many employees suffered aching teeth and jaws, sore joints, and sarcomas. As their ailments worsened, many sought answers from their employers. They were met with denials and misinformation even as evidence mounted that radium poisoned these women. After nearly 20 years, several trials, and thousands of dollars in doctor and attorney fees, the women won a small measure of justice, but for some, it was too late. Moore's well-researched narrative is written with clarity and a sympathetic voice that brings these figures and their struggles to life. VERDICT A mustread for anyone interested in American and women's history, as well as topics of law, health, and industrial safety.--Chad E. Statler, Lakeland Comm. Coll., Kirtland, OH

The Radium Girls
Barbara Kiser
Nature. 534.7608 (June 23, 2016): p473.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Nature Publishing Group
http://www.nature.com/nature/index.html
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The Radium Girls

Kate Moore Simon & Schuster (2016)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In the 1910s, radium was marketed as a cure-all, incorporated into drinking water, cosmetics and even jockstraps. Kate Moore's harrowing chronicle traces how a number of young US women, hired to paint military timepieces with radium-laced paint, paid the price: many succumbed to radiation poisoning and died hideous deaths. Ultimately, the landmark case won by five of them inspired globally important research into radiation and its impacts -including longitudinal studies with survivors.

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's
Shining Women
Publishers Weekly.
264.12 (Mar. 20, 2017): p66.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women
Kate Moore. Sourcebooks, $26.99 (480p)
ISBN 978-1-4926-4935-9
British ghostwriter Moore traces the lives of more than a dozen American women who were employed as luminous
watch-dial painters as early as 1917. She tells how these women, some barely in their 20s, were enchanted by high pay
and the allure of the paint's luminescent substance: radium. Carefully researched, the work will stun readers with its
descriptions of the glittering artisans who, oblivious to health dangers, twirled camel-hair brushes to fine points using
their mouths, a technique called lip-pointing. By the end of 1918, one out of six American soldiers owned a luminous
watch, but the women had begun losing their teeth and entire pieces of their jaws. Moore describes the gruesome effects
of radiation exposure on these women's bodies, and she spares nothing in relaying the intense emotional suffering of
their friends and families during subsequent medical investigations and court battles. In giving voice to so many
victims, Moore overburdens the story line, which culminates with a 1938 headline trial during which a former
employee of the Radium Dial Company collapsed on the stand and had to testify from bed. Moore details what was a
"ground-breaking, law-changing, and life-saving accomplishment" for worker's rights; it lends an emotionally charged
ending to a long, sad book. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women." Publishers Weekly, 20 Mar. 2017, p. 66. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA487601802&it=r&asid=88345486d0975f7374eb8b12acc53b8e.
Accessed 22 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487601802
10/22/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1508699965023 2/2
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's
Shining Women
Stacy Shaw
Booklist.
113.14 (Mar. 15, 2017): p6.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women.
By Kate Moore.
May 2017.480p. Sourcebooks, $26.99 19781492649359). 363.17.
In 1917, the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation willingly employed young women, paid far better than most
businesses, and had many enticing perks--including the glow. Radium girls, most in their teens and early twenties,
painted watch dials with a luminescent paint mixed with radium dust, which clung to their hair and clothes and
produced a telltale glow about them as they walked home each evening. At the time, radium was used in cancer
treatments and touted in expensive tonics, so the girls didn't question smoothing the radium-laden paintbrushes in their
mouths, as instructed, or even painting their nails with them. But the women would soon suffer horrific pain and
grotesquely shattered bones and teeth, and the company, it would be discovered, had known better. In 1928, just eight
years after women had earned the right to vote, a group of former radium girls brought suit against the companies
whose knowledge of radium's hazards, and careless disregard for them, had endangered and harmed them. This timely
book celebrates the strength of a group of women whose determination to fight improved both labor laws and scientific
knowledge of radium poisoning. English author Moore, who directed a play about the girls, writes in a highly readable,
narrative
style, and her chronicle of these inspirational women's lives is sure to provoke discussion--and outrage--in book
groups.--Stacy Shaw
YA: Though the facts are sad and difficult, Moore's personalized accounts of the girls (some as young as 13) will speak
to teens. SS.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Shaw, Stacy. "The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women." Booklist, 15 Mar. 2017, p. 6. General
OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA490998344&it=r&asid=d4e4180e09b4d77e690396aac418b494.
Accessed 22 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490998344

"Kate Moore: Moore's action-packed history brings the true story of the radium girls, who were poisoned while working with radioactive paint in WWI-era factories, to life." Publishers Weekly, 15 May 2017, p. S86. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA492435733&it=r&asid=4c17816fbb6e78ad0672bf617598e081. Accessed 22 Oct. 2017. "Women & War." Library Journal, 15 Feb. 2017, p. 100. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA481649154&it=r&asid=e5874a06589c1d26c1270d38a393d7e2. Accessed 22 Oct. 2017. Kiser, Barbara. "The Radium Girls." Nature, vol. 534, no. 7608, 2016, p. 473. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA456095083&it=r&asid=6b24c3787c6a0b88db8f45348fbf9464. Accessed 22 Oct. 2017. "The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women." Publishers Weekly, 20 Mar. 2017, p. 66. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA487601802&it=r. Accessed 22 Oct. 2017. Shaw, Stacy. "The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women." Booklist, 15 Mar. 2017, p. 6. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA490998344&it=r. Accessed 22 Oct. 2017.