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The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
William Morrow
September 2016
On Sale: September 6, 2016
368 pages
ISBN: 006236359X
EAN: 9780062363596
Kindle: B0166JFFD0
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction History
The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians
at NASA at the leading edge of the feminist and civil rights
movement, whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s
greatest achievements in space—a powerful, revelatory
contribution that is as essential to our understanding of
race, discrimination, and achievement in modern America as
Between the World and Me and The Immortal Life of Henrietta
Lacks. Soon to be a major motion picture 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.
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