Melanie Marnich’s play These Shining Lives depicts the true story of the battle fought by four female factory workers against an employer whose work is making them sick.

In the 1920s, the Radium Dial Company hired thousands of female workers at three plants around the country. Their job was to paint a radium-laced, glow-in-the-dark substance onto the dials of clocks and watches. The women were never warned about the harmful effects of the radioactive element, and many later died from radium poisoning.

In the limited amount of ancient history we have, many women have been swept under the rug. It's difficult for historians to really know much about ancient women, as little could be written about them. In the book Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World, author Emma Southon  looks at one of the few Ancient Roman women that was written about. A mother of an emperor and eventual empress, Southen argues that historians may have it wrong about Agrippina. West Lafayette Public Library Director Nick Schenkel has the review.