Hidden Figures
By Margot Lee Shetterly
This is the book that led to the movie of the same name. First I saw the movie, which I would highly recommend. That led to requesting the book at the library to find out more. Of course, the book is much more detailed than the movie.
The movie focused on three women, and primarily on Katherine Johnson, highlighting her amazing intelligence, the racism she faced working at NASA, and her key role in the first manned flight into space.
The book takes a much more detailed look at the role of black women in the aerospace industry, particularly highly educated women who all started at NASA as "computers", performing all the mathematical computations required by the engineers. The time frame starts just after WWII, when planes were undergoing rapid development and change, and goes up to the first manned flight to the moon in 1969.
The book also examines the parallel education system of black people in America, the lives and aspirations of extremely well educated black people, though focusing on women, racism and the fight for equal access and equal pay at NASA, plus the general struggle for black equality in America during the same time period.
It focuses on several outstanding black women who worked for NASA, their contribution to the aerospace industry and their enduring legacy.
Though I skimmed some of this book (not really into the technical details of math or the space industry), it is a book well worth reading just because it's celebrates the incredible intelligence of these amazing black women who worked as "computers" before the computer took over their jobs In an era when women in general had to fight to be recognized, these black women attained incredible achievements.
Rating: 4.5/5
Recommendation: Yes!
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