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A review by outsmartyourshelf
Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
Whenever I've seen anything about the moon landing or space flight in films or TV, it's men who dominate whether physically carrying out a spacewalk or sitting at a computer in mission control. The average person could be forgiven for not knowing about the huge contribution that women made to the US working for NACA during WWII, the beginnings of NASA, right up to landing a man on the moon & beyond. This is because we were simply never told about them, they had been practically airbrushed out of history.
This book looks at the lives of several African-American women who worked as 'computers' as they calculated complex equations which contributed to the development of better, faster airplanes & eventually the trajectories of launching a rocket into space. Their stories should have been fascinating & I'm not sure if it is just how the book is written, but it was quite difficult to get through as it was rather dry. At the end I didn't feel that I knew anything really about the different women, very little personality came through on the page. It's a real shame as their stories deserve to be told. I may try watching the film instead.
This book looks at the lives of several African-American women who worked as 'computers' as they calculated complex equations which contributed to the development of better, faster airplanes & eventually the trajectories of launching a rocket into space. Their stories should have been fascinating & I'm not sure if it is just how the book is written, but it was quite difficult to get through as it was rather dry. At the end I didn't feel that I knew anything really about the different women, very little personality came through on the page. It's a real shame as their stories deserve to be told. I may try watching the film instead.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Racial slurs