Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race

by Margot Lee Shetterly

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Golden Globe--winner Taraji P. Henson and Academy Award--winners Octavia Spencer and Kevin Costner Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA's African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America's space program--and whose contributions have been unheralded, until now. Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as "Human Computers," calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws, these "colored computers," as they were known, used slide rules, adding machines, and pencil and paper to support America's fledgling aeronautics industry, and helped write the equations that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.
Drawing on the oral histories of scores of these "computers," personal recollections, interviews with NASA executives and engineers, archival documents, correspondence, and reporting from the era, Hidden Figures recalls America's greatest adventure and NASA's groundbreaking successes through the experiences of five spunky, courageous, intelligent, determined, and patriotic women: Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Christine Darden, and Gloria Champine. Moving from World War II through NASA's golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the women's rights movement, Hidden Figures interweaves a rich history of scientific achievement and technological innovation with the intimate stories of five women whose work forever changed the world--and whose lives show how out of one of America's most painful histories came one of its proudest moments.

• ISBN10: 006236359X
• ISBN13: 9780062363596
• Publish Date: 6 September 2016
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 10 April 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: William Morrow
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[Rinn]

I loved the film, and wanted this to be just as engaging. Sadly, I couldn't get on with how it was written at all.

[wyvernfriend]

The film felt a lot more cohesive, this was interesting but quite bitty, one minute I was following one life and the next another and it just didn't flow for me.  It was enjoyable but somehow unsatisfying, the lives were fascinating, what they had to endure and go through to get where they were was amazing.  The book could also have done with some illustrations, I do better with factual books where I can visualise the people involved.  Still it was interesting and kept me reading well past my bedtime.

[wcs53]

After seeing the trailer for the movie of the same name, I knew I had to read this book. It took me longer to read than I thought it would, but that's because it is a book that can't be rushed. The book is a fairly in-depth look at the lives of four very remarkable African-American women who were heavily involved in the field of engineering and mathematics at NACA, which eventually became the NASA that we know today. Their story is a remarkable one that remained hidden for far too long. It's hard to measure the contribution they made to history and their stories deserve to be told and retold for many more years to come.

Although I knew much about the American race for space before reading this, I learned more in this book and saw what I had learned in a different light. The four women broke into a system of male dominance and segregation at a time when American society was still stuck in those systems. Their stories are very inspirational and it's great that they have finally seen the light of day. One of my favourite parts of reading this book was discovering that Martin Luther King Jr. was a Trekkie!

I still haven't seen the movie yet, but I intend to soon. For anyone interested in the history of the space race this book is a must-read, but it's more than about just that. It's a very inspirational read and one that I'd heartily recommend.

[readingwithwrin]

Really great audiobook and really helped fill some of the blanks the movie had left.

[Sam@WLABB]

I am not a non-fiction reader, but I do love science, and this story was quite interesting. Sheerly didn't just tell the story of these women, but she compiled a whole lot of history. This book had women's history, black history, american history, aviation history, and it was woven together with the stories of these particular women quite nicely.

Overall: very enlightening and interesting read

[Heather]

"Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program—and whose contributions have been unheralded, until now.
Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as “Human Computers,” calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws, these “colored computers,” as they were known, used slide rules, adding machines, and pencil and paper to support America’s fledgling aeronautics industry, and helped write the equations that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.
Drawing on the oral histories of scores of these “computers,” personal recollections, interviews with NASA executives and engineers, archival documents, correspondence, and reporting from the era, Hidden Figures recalls America’s greatest adventure and NASA’s groundbreaking successes through the experiences of five spunky, courageous, intelligent, determined, and patriotic women: Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Christine Darden, and Gloria Champine.
Moving from World War II through NASA’s golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the women’s rights movement, Hidden Figures interweaves a rich history of scientific achievement and technological innovation with the intimate stories of five women whose work forever changed the world—and whose lives show how out of one of America’s most painful histories came one of its proudest moments."



In the 1940s airplanes were being studied in Virginia. Wind tunnels were built to evaluate minute changes in plane design in an effort to help win WWII. Large amounts of data were being collected. In order to process the numbers female mathematicians called computers where hired do crunch the numbers. Because Virginia was a segregated state, the women were kept in two areas. The East Computers were white and the West Computers were black.

A job as a computer was a step up for women with advanced degrees whose only hope for a job before this was teaching. This book covers the years from World War II to the beginning of the space age when Langley's operations moved to Houston.

The author's father had worked at Langley. The author grew up knowing several of the women but did not realize what they had done for space research. Most of the women were uncredited although several managed to get papers published over the years.

Eventually, women were absorbed into the labs that they had been supporting and the East and West Computer sections shut down. As machines became able to calculate faster than they could, they had to adapt to survive. Some moved more into research. Others became computer programmers to teach the machines the jobs that they previously did.

Among the women's contributions were:

• Calculating the time and location for a rocket to take off in order to have the capsule splash down near the Navy ships waiting to rescue the astronaut.


• Calculating all the variables involved in getting the lunar landing module off the moon and able to meet up with the orbiting ship for the return to Earth.


• Imagining the need for and then designing response scenarios for a systems malfunction like what happened on Apollo 13.

The scientific achievements of the black women profiled in this book were set against the backdrop of segregation and discrimination that they faced when they weren't at work.  A good companion book to this would be Something Must Be Done About Prince Edward County about the shut down of all schools by a county that did not want to integrate them. Many of these very educated women were from this area and/or had families affected by the shut down of the schools.

I enjoyed this book.  I'm looking forward to seeing the movie also even though it appears that it will be focusing mostly on the John Glenn orbital flight.  Read the book to find out the whole story.

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 This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story