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

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.

About the Author :
Margot Lee Shetterly grew up in Hampton, Virginia, where she knew many of the women in her book Hidden Figures. She is an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow and the recipient of a Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grant for her research on women in computing. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Review :
"Much as Tom Wolfe did in "The Right Stuff", Shetterly moves gracefully between the women's lives and the broader sweep of history . . . Shetterly, who grew up in Hampton, blends impressive research with an enormous amount of heart in telling these stories - Boston Globe "With HIDDEN FIGURES, Shetterly enacts a revolution no less crucial and pivotal as her subjects. Restoring the truth about the individuals who were at once black, women and astounding mathematicians, in a world that was constructed to stymie them at every step, is no easy task. Shetterly does it with the depth and detail of a skilled historian and the narrative aplomb of a masterful storyteller. ... Shetterly is never heavy-handed, but always searingly honest, and it's refreshing and devastatingly frustrating that the injustices these women endured extended to their erasure from history. ... This is a compulsively accessible work for anyone with an interest in history, science, civil rights, women's rights, or simply a great story." - Bookreporter.com "Restoring the truth about individuals who were at once black, women and astounding mathematicians, in a world that was constructed to stymie them at every step, is no easy task. Shetterly does it with the depth and detail of a skilled historian and the narrative aplomb of a masterful storyteller." - Bookreporter.com "Meticulous... the depth and detail that are the book's strength make it an effective, fact-based rudder with which would-be scientists and their allies can stabilize their flights of fancy. This hardworking, earnest book is the perfect foil for the glamour still to come." - Seattle Times "You don't have to be black, female or a whiz at math to be fascinated by the story of these smart human computers." - Richmond Times-Dispatch "Hidden Figures is clearly fueled by pride and admiration, a tender account of genuine transcendence and camaraderie." - New York Times Book Review "Genuinely inspiring. . . . Much as Tom Wolfe did in "The Right Stuff", Shetterly moves gracefully between the women's lives and the broader sweep of history . . . Shetterly, who grew up in Hampton, blends impressive research with an enormous amount of heart in telling these stories." - Boston Globe