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

so much of our history is hidden from us. This is an extremely good example of how the contributions of young black women in the forties all the way up through current times. For what reason, I have no idea. These women are so inspirational regardless of your color or gender.

So excited that this book is finally on Audible! Hidden Figures shines a light on a very important and often over looked part of American History. This story of the important contrabutions these women made to science and NASA needed to be told!

This book not only opened my eyes to a part of history that I did not realize existed but it also brought to my attention of the role of women so overlook and underpaid. I enjoyed all the details and descriptions of all these women. So happy their stories have finally been told!

Wow! How is this not in the history books? Thankfully the author took the time to honor these women. Bravo!!

This book reveals an hidden history of NASA and it's willingness to seek out talent no matter where it may be. I will probably read it again.

I am a fifty-seven year old black woman who was raised during the sixties and seventies. My father taught his children to learn about their roots and to hold themselves with dignity. I attended classes on African history in High school, but until now the story of black female mathematicians was completely unknown to me.

This the story of young women of color who joined NACA before it became NASA in the war years. How they were called 'computers' who worked equations in order to bring about proper construction for airplanes such as the B-29 Super Fortress and many others.

That alone should be enough to draws in the listener, the sheer scope of what these women accomplished during the time of segregation is simply amazing.

Robin Miles reading gives the story an elegant air, the reader will not be disappointed.

This could have been a great book. The story is a little-known one. Unfortunately, we never really get to know these amazing women. There is more time spent on the ills of segregation than on developing the lives of these incredible "computers". Their contributions were enormous, but they are marginalized in this book for the sake of constant reminders of the hard times of that era. I totally agree...segregation was horrible. I can't imagine the hardships these women and their families went through. But, once we had a lesson about their courage and determination in the face of great odds, I would have loved to learn more about them, what they did, and how they did it. This book never took me there. The author missed a huge opportunity to tell us all about their accomplishments--women who helped to shape the future of this country's air and space programs.

The narrator was monotonous, and I had a hard time staying engaged. There was no enthusiasm. Every word was spoken in the same flat tone. As much as I looked forward to listening to this book, I'm terribly disappointed--I was bored. I can only hope the movie will be better.

Who said women are not able to do mathematics? They should read this book. A while back I read “Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars” by Nathalia Holt. I found the book fascinating. When I saw the book “Hidden Figures”, I just had to read it. Both these books tell the story of women mathematicians. “Rise of the Rocket Girls” takes place at Cal Tech./NASA in California and “Hidden Figures” takes place at NACA/NASA facility in Langley, VA. The women in “Hidden Figures” are all black.

In the days before electronic or even mechanical computers existed, the calculations where done by hand. This work was exacting, intense and labor-intensive also it was poorly paid. The job description was computer or calculator and it was done by women. Prior to World War II one of the biggest employers of human calculators/computers was The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It was the predecessor of NASA. NACA did research work on engine cowls and airfoils requiring many engineers and mathematicians. When WWII began the need for these mathematicians exploded. The job was only open to women; soon they had to recruit college-educated black women into the position.

This book tells of the experience of these women at the Langley, VA facility which was in the segregated south. Some of these brilliant black women earned the job title of engineers. Shetterly’s story goes from the 1930s to the 1960s and includes the story of their role in John Glenn’s Mercury Mission.

The book is well written and meticulously researched. I found this book to be inspiring and uplifting. The story is fascinating and makes me wonder where are the young women in STEM education and jobs today. This book is a must read for all high school girls black or white. I understand this book is being made into a movie.

Robin Miles does an excellent job narrating the book. Miles is a veteran Broadway actress and multi-award winning audiobook narrator.

I live in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, where NASA's JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) is hidden at the top of the Arroyo Seco. Riding the Metro Gold Line east to historic Monrovia from Los Angeles' lovingly maintained Art Deco/Mission Revival style Union Station, you'd never guess the gleaming light rail tracks cross and recross secret washes and gullies where the engines that would take people to the moon and beyond were tested.

NASA didn't just hide its rockets - it hid its people, too, and across the country. "Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race" (2016) is an exploration of Black women in the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, 1915 - 1958) and its successor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), especially at Langley Air Force Base.

Langley is by Hampton and Newport News, Virginia. Jim Crow laws - the so-called state law "separate but equal" laws - were in force for the entirety of NACA. Langley followed state laws, which meant that highly educated and talented women from then Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) were calculating ballistic trajectories during World War II - and then eating lunch in the "Colored" area. Black women calculators were absolutely crucial to the war effort, but couldn't use the same bathrooms as their White colleagues. Margot Lee Shetterly's writing is so empathetic that I felt the burn of anger that super human computer Katherine Johnson and her coworkers felt.

I love that the book has such a thorough discussion of actual segregation, and the key role that Thurgood Marshall (1908 - 1993) had in ending it. When the US Supreme Court abolished separate Black schools in Brown v Board of Education (1954) 347 US 483, some school districts in Virginia closed for years rather than integrate - which meant that some children, Black and White, were denied years of schooling. Just the logistics of being a working mother without child care must have been daunting. Shetterly reminds us that Brown and the forced integration in Little Rock, AR, were not the end of educational discrimination - they were the beginning of an end that hasn't happened yet.

Shetterly's book is pretty good on the social issues, but I found it hard to follow the women's lives. The book jumped from topic to topic and different eras. There's such a great discussion of Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha that when I came across their booth at my daughter's college fair this week, I was awed. AKA didn't come up until the last part of the book, even though it was part of the women's lives from the beginning.

I was disappointed the physics and chemistry of flight, missiles, rocketry and space exploration weren't well explained. Shetterly lightly addresses what human calculators did. Nathalia Holt's "Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us from Missiles to the Moon" (2016), the story of women computers at Southern California's JPL, has a great discussion of the science. The difference might be because "Hidden Figures" was optioned and filmed as a major motion picture before it was published as a book. The book was released September 6, 2016; and the movie is being released either at Christmas, 2016 or January 13, 2017 - after this review was written.

Even though I found parts of the book a little meandering and lacking in depth, I'm giving the book and audible performance my highest rating and recommendation. It's a great story, and one that deserves a listen.

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Amazing story that definitely deserves to be told! Also looking forward to the upcoming movie based on it