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

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

5 Star reviews for Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly.

This is a wonderful book that tells the story of three educated black women who had to deal with segregation, having master’s degrees in engineering, mathematics, and known as “human computers” all before the computers came along. They were not only women, but black women in a time that was more about men holding down good paying jobs. This is a true story about how these pioneer women broke all barriers to help the space age to get John Glen, Alan Shepard, Neil Armstrong and all the other great astronauts in to space. How these women used their minds, pencils, rulers, adding machines, all by hand and going over and over the figures several times by hand to make sure the calculations were right to not only get the men into space but to also bring them home safely not only to the world to see, but to their families as well.

Many of these African American women were only able to get teaching jobs in segregated public schools; Dorothy Vaughan answered an ad for Langley who needed people who were able to help work on designing planes to help win the war. She was assigned to the West Computer section; here is where she spent many years working on projects for the wars, NASA, and anything else she was told to work on. Here is where she worked her way up the ladder and became a supervisor. She also helped new families who moved to Langley find housing, child care or whatever the family needs. She also took care of her family all the while she was the main bread winner for her family. Dorothy was a very friend, smart, loving mother and wife, who enjoyed her time at Langley. She was just as proud of the other women that worked there and she knew the other women’s strength and weakness’s and knew who would be suited for this job or that job. She was proud of her work, but she stayed true to herself, her beliefs, and values. When she was promoted, had her name on published papers, or won an award, inside she was overjoyed, but in front of others, she didn’t change or act like she was superior over them, she stayed working there until her retirement.

Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson are two other African American women who worked with Dorothy Vaughan. Mary Jackson loses her husband to brain cancer and is left to raise their two daughters on her own. Mary meets John Glen who later comes to depend on Mary’s accuracy of her numbers to bring him back home. Both of these women along with Dorothy Vaughan form an alliance and friendship that not only help them at their jobs, but betters their lives not only for themselves but for their families and for all the women that came after them. But the one thing that unified them was the race to help get the men into space. Each woman played their part to help the country’s future.

I really enjoyed reading this book and felt that the author did a lot of research to bring these unsung women to the forefront. I liked how she also explained some of the things the women had to do and explained it to where someone like me that had no idea how the math would play apart in building a rocket let alone how they were going to put a man into space and all that went into it.
She also focused on what the women went through not only at work while working with men in a time where women usually didn’t work outside the home, to their personal life. She gave you a sense of the era as though you were right there in that exact time period and was witnessing the way the world was.

This was a very interesting and fast paced book. I enjoyed all the characters as well as learning something about how the world dreamed of putting a man into space and making that dream become a reality.


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