Download or read book Radium Girls written by Claudia Clark and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early twentieth century, a group of women workers hired to apply luminous paint to watch faces and instrument dials found themselves among the first victims of radium poisoning. Claudia Clark's book tells the compelling story of these women, who at first had no idea that the tedious task of dialpainting was any different from the other factory jobs available to them. But after repeated exposure to the radium-laced paint, they began to develop mysterious, often fatal illnesses that they traced to conditions in the workplace. Their fight to have their symptoms recognized as an industrial disease represents an important chapter in the history of modern health and labor policy. Clark's account emphasizes the social and political factors that influenced the responses of the workers, managers, government officials, medical specialists, and legal authorities involved in the case. She enriches the story by exploring contemporary disputes over workplace control, government intervention, and industry-backed medical research. Finally, in appraising the dialpainters' campaign to secure compensation and prevention of further incidents--efforts launched with the help of the reform-minded, middle-class women of the Consumers' League--Clark is able to evaluate the achievements and shortcomings of the industrial health movement as a whole.
Download or read book The Radium Girls written by Kate Moore and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and Amazon Charts Bestseller! For fans of Hidden Figures, comes the incredible true story of the women heroes who were exposed to radium in factories across the U.S. in the early 20th century, and their brave and groundbreaking battle to strengthen workers' rights, even as the fatal poison claimed their own lives... In the dark years of the First World War, radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright. Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these "shining girls" are the luckiest alive — until they begin to fall mysteriously ill. And, until they begin to come forward. As the women start to speak out on the corruption, the factories that once offered golden opportunities ignore all claims of the gruesome side effects. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America's early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights that will echo for centuries to come. A timely story of corporate greed and the brave figures that stood up to fight for their lives, these women and their voices will shine for years to come. Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the "wonder" substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives...
Download or read book Deadly Glow written by Ross Mullner and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Radium Girls written by D. W. Gregory and published by Dramatic Publishing. This book was released on 2003 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1926, radium was a miracle cure, Madame Curie an international celebrity, and luminous watches the latest rage- until the girls who painted them began to fall ill with a mysterious disease. Inspired by a true story, Radium Girls traces the efforts of Grace Fryer, a dial painter, as she fights for her day in court. Her chief adversary is her former employer, Arthur Roeder, an idealistic man who cannot bring himself to believe that the same element that shrinks tumors could have anything to do with the terrifying rash of illnesses among his employees. As the case goes on, however, Grace finds herself battling not only with the U.S. Radium Corporation, but also with her own family and friends, who fear that her campaign for justice will backfire.
Download or read book The Radium Girls Young Readers Edition written by Kate Moore and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the unbelievable true story of America's glowing girls and their fight for justice in the young readers edition of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller The Radium Girls. This enthralling new edition includes all-new material, including a glossary, timeline, and dozens of bonus photos. Amid the excitement of the early twentieth century, hundreds of young women spend their days hard at work painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark radium paint. The painters consider themselves lucky—until they start suffering from a mysterious illness. As the corporations try to cover up a shocking secret, these shining girls suddenly find themselves at the center of a deadly scandal. The Radium Girls: Young Readers Edition tells the unbelievable true story of these incredible women, whose determination to fight back saved countless lives. This new edition of the national bestseller is perfect for: Educators looking for history books for kids ages 9 to 12, nonfiction books for kids, biographies for kids, and real stories around the industrial revolution, chemistry, and science Parents, educators, and librarians looking for stories about strong women, inspiring books for girls, childrens books about women in history, and famous women books for girls Young readers who want to read one of the most inspiring and shocking narratives of the early 20th century
Download or read book Luminous written by Samantha Wilcoxson and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-02 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catherine Donohue's life was set on a an unexpected course when she accepted a job at Radium Dial. The pay was great, and her co-workers became her best friends. But a secret was lurking in the greenish-grey paint that magically made things glow in the dark. When Catherine and her friends started becoming sick, this shy Catholic girl stood up to the might of the radium industry, the legal and medical communities, and townspeople who told her to be quiet. Would she be too late? Catherine's quest for social justice in the era between World Wars is emotive and inspiring.
Download or read book Radium in Humans written by R. E. Rowland and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Radiation and Health written by Thormod Henriksen and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2002-09-05 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Radiation and the effects of radioactivity have been known for more than 100 years. International research spanning this period has yielded a great deal of information about radiation and its biological effects and this activity has resulted in the discovery of many applications in medicine and industry including cancer therapy, medical diagnostics
Download or read book Impatient Crusader Florence Kelley s Life Story written by Josephine Clara Goldmark and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2020-02-26 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Florence Kelley (1859-1932) fought to implement child labor laws, minimum wages, maximum working hours, industrial health control, prenatal care to lower maternal and infant mortality. She was among the late 19th and early 20th centuries militant women, including Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, Lillian Wald and others, who have come to be called social reformers. Her close friend and fellow worker, Josephine Goldmark (1877-1950), tells a sympathetic yet richly detailed story of Florence Kelley’s energetic life and accomplishments. At the turn of the 20th century and afterward, the 12-hour workday and the 7-day workweek prevailed in many industries. The sweatshop was commonplace. In most states women and young girls worked long hours unregulated by law. Child labor, beginning at age 10 or 12, was the normal pattern for the poor. That such social evils have largely disappeared is due in large part to the insistent and impatient crusading of Florence Kelley as Chief Inspector of Factories for Illinois; at Hull House in Chicago and the Henry Street Settlement in New York; as General Secretary of the National Consumers League; to establish the U.S. Children’s Bureau; in the National Woman Suffrage Association, the National Child Labor Committee and the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. Florence Kelley worked with the law, especially with Boston lawyer Louis D. Brandeis, spent herself tirelessly in research to document the legal basis for shorter working hours for women, an investigation now famous as the “Brandeis Brief.” Indignant and eloquent, she stimulated the investigation of the use of radium in luminous paint, to end deaths from poisoning of dial painters in watch factories. “When Mrs. Kelley began her career as chief factory inspector in Illinois in 1893 there were no minimum wage laws. The 12-hour-day and 7-day-week prevailed in the steel industry. Sweat shops were legion. Tenement home work which enlisted mothers and children at low wages and long hours was the rule. These were the evils which Mrs. Kelley fought as a pioneer. In these pages Josephine Goldmark, her friend, associate and fellow worker, brings home to us in simple and vivid language the story of that long, patient struggle which paved the way for later reforms.” — Louis Stark, The New York Times “A more sympathetic biographer for the late Florence Kelley could scarcely have been found than the scholarly woman who was her co-worker during thirty of the forty years of her immensely active public career. Josephine Goldmark’s life of Mrs. Kelley is fine alike for the delicacy of its insights into her colleague’s basic motivations and for its tact in presenting the controversial aspects of her life and of the important legislative reforms in which she played a decisive role.” — Louise M. Young, The American Historical Review “Impatient Crusader is certainly a perfect title for a biography of Florence Kelley... [it] provides exciting reading as it traces the work of a great woman in many of the social reforms of the first half of the twentieth century.” — Helen R. Wright, Social Service Review “The interesting life-story of Florence Kelley, one of the militant, dedicated women of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book, by one of her fellow workers, makes vivid the early crusades for child labor laws, minimum wages, maximum hours, and industrial health control.” — Current History “[An] excellent biography of Mrs. Kelley and her times.” — Irving Dilliard, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
Download or read book The Plutonium Files written by Eileen Welsome and published by Delta. This book was released on 2010-10-20 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the vast wartime factories of the Manhattan Project began producing plutonium in quantities never before seen on earth, scientists working on the top-secret bomb-building program grew apprehensive. Fearful that plutonium might cause a cancer epidemic among workers and desperate to learn more about what it could do to the human body, the Manhattan Project's medical doctors embarked upon an experiment in which eighteen unsuspecting patients in hospital wards throughout the country were secretly injected with the cancer-causing substance. Most of these patients would go to their graves without ever knowing what had been done to them. Now, in The Plutonium Files, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Eileen Welsome reveals for the first time the breadth of the extraordinary fifty-year cover-up surrounding the plutonium injections, as well as the deceitful nature of thousands of other experiments conducted on American citizens in the postwar years. Welsome's remarkable investigation spans the 1930s to the 1990s and draws upon hundreds of newly declassified documents and other primary sources to disclose this shadowy chapter in American history. She gives a voice to such innocents as Helen Hutchison, a young woman who entered a prenatal clinic in Nashville for a routine checkup and was instead given a radioactive "cocktail" to drink; Gordon Shattuck, one of several boys at a state school for the developmentally disabled in Massachusetts who was fed radioactive oatmeal for breakfast; and Maude Jacobs, a Cincinnati woman suffering from cancer and subjected to an experimental radiation treatment designed to help military planners learn how to win a nuclear war. Welsome also tells the stories of the scientists themselves, many of whom learned the ways of secrecy on the Manhattan Project. Among them are Stafford Warren, a grand figure whose bravado masked a cunning intelligence; Joseph Hamilton, who felt he was immune to the dangers of radiation only to suffer later from a fatal leukemia; and physician Louis Hempelmann, one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the plan to inject humans with potentially carcinogenic doses of plutonium. Hidden discussions of fifty years past are reconstructed here, wherein trusted government officials debated the ethical and legal implications of the experiments, demolishing forever the argument that these studies took place in a less enlightened era. Powered by her groundbreaking reportage and singular narrative gifts, Eileen Welsome has created a work of profound humanity as well as major historical significance. From the Hardcover edition.
Download or read book Exposure written by Robert Bilott and published by Atria Books. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “For Erin Brockovich fans, a David vs. Goliath tale with a twist” (The New York Times Book Review)—the incredible true story of the lawyer who spent two decades building a case against DuPont for its use of the hazardous chemical PFOA, uncovering the worst case of environmental contamination in history—affecting virtually every person on the planet—and the conspiracy that kept it a secret for sixty years. The story that inspired Dark Waters, the major motion picture from Focus Features starring Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway, directed by Todd Haynes. 1998: Rob Bilott is a young lawyer specializing in helping big corporations stay on the right side of environmental laws and regulations. Then he gets a phone call from a West Virginia farmer named Earl Tennant, who is convinced the creek on his property is being poisoned by runoff from a neighboring DuPont landfill, causing his cattle and the surrounding wildlife to die in hideous ways. Earl hasn’t even been able to get a water sample tested by any state or federal regulatory agency or find a local lawyer willing to take the case. As soon as they hear the name DuPont—the area’s largest employer—they shut him down. Once Rob sees the thick, foamy water that bubbles into the creek, the gruesome effects it seems to have on livestock, and the disturbing frequency of cancer and other health problems in the area, he’s persuaded to fight against the type of corporation his firm routinely represents. After intense legal wrangling, Rob ultimately gains access to hundreds of thousands of pages of DuPont documents, some of them fifty years old, that reveal the company has been holding onto decades of studies proving the harmful effects of a chemical called PFOA, used in making Teflon. PFOA is often called a “forever chemical,” because once in the environment, it does not break down or degrade for millions of years, contaminating the planet forever. The case of one farmer soon spawns a class action suit on behalf of seventy thousand residents—and the shocking realization that virtually every person on the planet has been exposed to PFOA and carries the chemical in his or her blood. What emerges is a riveting legal drama “in the grand tradition of Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action” (Booklist, starred review) about malice and manipulation, the failings of environmental regulation; and one lawyer’s twenty-year struggle to expose the truth about this previously unknown—and still unregulated—chemical that we all have inside us.
Download or read book Common Sense and a Little Fire written by Annelise Orleck and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2000-11-09 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Common Sense and a Little Fire traces the personal and public lives of four immigrant women activists who left a lasting imprint on American politics. Though they have rarely had more than cameo appearances in previous histories, Rose Schneiderman, Fannia Cohn, Clara Lemlich Shavelson, and Pauline Newman played important roles in the emergence of organized labor, the New Deal welfare state, adult education, and the modern women's movement. Orleck takes her four subjects from turbulent, turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe to the radical ferment of New York's Lower East Side and the gaslit tenements where young workers studied together. Drawing from the women's writings and speeches, she paints a compelling picture of housewives' food and rent protests, of grim conditions in the garment shops, of factory-floor friendships that laid the basis for a mass uprising of young women garment workers, and of the impassioned rallies working women organized for suffrage. From that era of rebellion, Orleck charts the rise of a distinctly working-class feminism that fueled poor women's activism and shaped government labor, tenant, and consumer policies through the early 1950s.
Download or read book The Poisoner s Handbook written by Deborah Blum and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner's Handbook is "a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie." —The New York Observer “The Poisoner’s Handbook breathes deadly life into the Roaring Twenties.” —Financial Times “Reads like science fiction, complete with suspense, mystery and foolhardy guys in lab coats tipping test tubes of mysterious chemicals into their own mouths.” —NPR: What We're Reading A fascinating Jazz Age tale of chemistry and detection, poison and murder, The Poisoner's Handbook is a page-turning account of a forgotten era. In early twentieth-century New York, poisons offered an easy path to the perfect crime. Science had no place in the Tammany Hall-controlled coroner's office, and corruption ran rampant. However, with the appointment of chief medical examiner Charles Norris in 1918, the poison game changed forever. Together with toxicologist Alexander Gettler, the duo set the justice system on fire with their trailblazing scientific detective work, triumphing over seemingly unbeatable odds to become the pioneers of forensic chemistry and the gatekeepers of justice. In 2014, PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE released a film based on The Poisoner's Handbook.
Download or read book Jailbird written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2010-07-28 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Kurt Vonnegut] has never been more satirically on-target. . . . Nothing is spared.”—People Jailbird takes us into a fractured and comic, pure Vonnegut world of high crimes and misdemeanors in government—and in the heart. This wry tale follows bumbling bureaucrat Walter F. Starbuck from Harvard to the Nixon White House to the penitentiary as Watergate’s least known co-conspirator. But the humor turns dark when Vonnegut shines his spotlight on the cold hearts and calculated greed of the mighty, giving a razor-sharp edge to an unforgettable portrait of power and politics in our times. Praise for Jailbird “[Vonnegut] is our strongest writer . . . the most stubbornly imaginative.”—John Irving “A gem . . . a mature, imaginative novel—possibly the best he has written . . . Jailbird is a guided tour de force of America. Take it!”—Playboy “A profoundly humane comedy . . . Jailbird definitely mounts up on angelic wings—in its speed, in its sparkle, and in its high-flying intent.”—Chicago Tribune Book World “Joyously inventive . . . gleams with the loony magic Vonnegut alone can achieve.”—Cosmopolitan “Vonnegut is our great apocalyptic writer, the closest thing we’ve had to a prophet since . . . Lenny Bruce.”—Chicago Sun-Times “Vonnegut at his impressive best. . . . His imaginative leaps alone . . . are worth the price of admission. . . . His far-reaching metaphysical and cultural concerns . . . are ultimately serious and worth our contemplation.”—The Washington Post
Download or read book These Shining Lives written by Melanie Marnich and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2010 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE STORY: THESE SHINING LIVES chronicles the strength and determination of women considered expendable in their day, exploring their true story and its continued resonance. Catherine and her friends are dying, it's true; but theirs is a story of survival
Download or read book Budding Prospects written by T.C. Boyle and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2014-11-06 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Felix is a quitter, with a poor track record behind him. Until the day the opportunity presents itself to make half a million dollars tax-free - by nurturing 390 acres of cannabis in the lonely hills of northern California.
Download or read book The Big Love written by Florence Aadland and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. California Interest. Women's Studies. Film. Memoir. THE BIG LOVE is a Hollywood nightmare. It tells the story of Errol Flynn--a fading, alcoholic movie star--and the underage dancer-actress Beverly Aadland. The narrator? Beverly Aadland's fame-worshiping mother Mrs. Florence Aadland, who spurs the relationship on. There is nothing subtle or sympathetic about this memoir: It is outrageous, grotesque, surreal, notorious--an intimate look at Hollywood exploitation and decay. On the one hand, THE BIG LOVE depicts the deterioration of Errol Flynn, an actor who is quickly losing relevance after years of playing irresistible swashbucklers in films such as Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). He is riddled with medical problems, drinking himself to death. On the other hand, there is Mrs. Florence Aadland, also an alcoholic, an uncultured stage mother psychotically pushing her daughter Beverly forward even at the cost of her own marriage. A bizarre, seedy time capsule of the 1950s, THE BIG LOVE is the long-lost literary sister of Barbara Payton's I AM NOT ASHAMED. And, after languishing out of print for years, it is ready to shock brand new audiences with its absurd humor, villainous characters, and sickly dissipation.
