“An extraordinarily rich and rewarding book. . . . Clark provides a sophisticated and complex analysis of the interaction of labor, reformers, industrial physicians, academics, and industry that illuminates the specifics of this case as well as the development of industrial hygiene in general. . . . Radium Girls is a brilliant case study of the radium dial industry. But it is much more. It should be of interest to those interested in social history, women’s history, and labor history and the development of public health in the United States.” — Journal of American History
“A rich education in how 'knowledge about industrial diseases is a contested site of power'. . . . Contributes to the cultural history of the atomic age.” — Labor Studies Journal
“A dramatic and important story. By so heedfully unearthing workers’ perspectives and experiences and by broaching extra-workplace questions about consumption, Clark helps transport the history of ‘occupational health’ beyond the framework first forged by George Rosen and Henry Sigerist, based on 1920s and 1930s industrial hygiene.” — Bulletin of the History of Medicine
“An intelligent book that is both meticulously researched and highly readable. [Clark] demonstrates an impressive mastery of many disparate sub-disciplines, and weaves dominant debates of these fields into a tapestry of narrative that is cogent, compelling and compassionate. . . . Highly recommended to all those interested in women’s history, labour history and the social history of medicine within and without the United States.” — Labour History Review
“Provides an understanding of the situation of one sector of working class women, and the strengths and weaknesses of one of the major middle-class women’s social reform organizations of the Progressive Era in the period of World War I. . . . Clark does an excellent job of showing the weaknesses of the company and state medical investigators, and the economic and political ties which kept them from conscientiously defending worker or public health. Her story also makes clear many of the limitations of the middle-class reform movement and of Progressive Era reformers in general.” — Against the Current
“This well-researched book. . . . provides an interesting social and human perspective on a classic health physics case.” — Health Physics
“Well written and provocative . . . illuminate[s] the significance of occupational disease in American workplaces, while exploring how reformers during the Progressive period sought to draw attention to them.” — Technology & Culture
“A considerable achievement. . . . A salutary and sobering story of the damage inflicted on a very vulnerable group of young women and of the reactions of confusion, denial, subterfuge and sometimes frank dishonesty which the emerging facts provoked.” — Medical History
“A compelling and eminently readable book.” — Social History of Medicine
“An important contribution to the historiography of the occupational hygiene movement in the United States.” — Industrial and Labor Relations Review
