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Hidden Figures

the American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
Feb 10, 2018tjdickey rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
The story sparked an excellent film - African-American women whose skill at math and in the nascent field of computer science helped assure the success of the Apollo Program. The book gives a much more detailed account of the complete path-breaking careers of the women, from the dark days of WW2 to the moon landing, and spends a lot more time speaking directly to issues of discrimination and prejudice, and to the great moments when a decision was made, for instance, to appoint the first non-white woman as a section head, and another to an engineering position in the national research labs. A self-proclaimed "first-time author with no background as a historian," Shetterly writes a piece that often carries us along like a novel.