History Book Disussion: Hidden Figures

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

by Margot Lee Shetterly

Shetterly’s Hidden Figures is the story and celebration of the four dozen unsung black women who worked as computers, mathematicians, scientists, and engineers from 1943 to 1980 for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and its successor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). More precisely, it is a historical homage to the fearlessness of mathematical minds too brilliant to be hindered by racism and sexism — to women who walked away from traditional, low-paying teaching jobs and marched into a predominantly white, segregated work force that considered them, in Shetterly’s words, “invisible and invaluable at the same time.”Los Angeles Review of Books, Jan. 19, 2017