Radium Girls, by Kate Moore

Summary: During WWII, many teenaged girls worked in watch dial painting shops, dipping their brushes into radium and pointing the brush with their lips. When they started presenting horrible side effects of the radium poisoning, such as necrosis of the jaw (to the point of the jaw falling out), cancer, and other horrible diseases, they realized that the firm they worked for had been lying about how dangerous radium was. They sued, they failed. They sued, they failed. They sued, they failed. As they died, the remaining girls sued and sued, until finally a few girls finally won a suit. This is a book about the injustice of the system – and the development of laws regarding work-related poison.

Thoughts: This book was fascinating in itself, though it took me a long time to finish. I enjoyed it, but not as much as I had anticipated. The information was intriguing and I loved learning more about history. But I felt that the book lacked excitement as the suits dragged on and on and nothing seemed to happen.