Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race [9780062363602]

Overview

The #1 New York Times
bestseller

The phenomenal true
story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel
some of America’s greatest achievements in space—a powerful, revelatory history
essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern
America. The basis for the smash Academy Award-nominated
film starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten
Dunst, and Kevin Costner.

Before John Glenn
orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated
female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and
adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and
astronauts, into space.

Among these
problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women,
some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to
teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into
service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics
industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these
overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they
answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating,
high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.

Even as Virginia’s Jim
Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the
women of Langley’s all-black “West Computing” group helped America achieve one
of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the
Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.

Starting in World War
II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space
Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan,
Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American
women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes. It chronicles
their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances
and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future.

-WINNER OF
ANISFIELD-WOLF AWARD FOR NONFICTION