Book Review: Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

About:

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly is a non-fiction book about NASA’s African-American female mathematicians.

The publisher is giv­ing away one copy of this book  –to enter fill out the Raf­fle­copt­ter form at the end of the post.

• 368 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 006236359X

My rat­ing for Hidden Figures — 5
Buy Hidden Figures from Amazon.com*
More Books by Margot Lee Shetterly

Thoughts:

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly is a book right up my alley. Not only it is about the space program, but also about bright people preserving and making a name for themselves through education and smarts.

The author does an excellent job telling a story through the lens of the time, when Jim Crow laws ruled the day and unabashed racism was something to be proud of.

The story revolves around four determined African-American women, mathematical geniuses who, for all their smarts, the best they could hope for would be a position of a math teacher. These women answered ads for a position of “computer” for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor to NASA. As a computer, they got sheets with large formulas by the engineers and had to compute the outcome.

Hidden Figures was an informative and fascinating read. The author’s work shows what a difficult job these women had, and what an inspiration they were for overcoming the odds.

Buy Hidden Figures from Amazon.com*
More Books by Margot Lee Shetterly

Give­away

• Give­away ends: October 3, 2016
  

• Winners must have a valid e-mail address

• Win­ners will have 24 hours to write back with their address, oth­er­wise an alter­nate win­ner will be picked.

Congratulations: k3kdpv@

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I got this book for free from HarperCollins and TLC Book Tours.
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account