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

I saw the movie before I read the book, and I am honestly not sure whether that was a good or bad thing. I loved the movie, and I loved the book, but they are very different.Generally, the book is a very fast-paced and interesting read about the black women who worked at the Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, and their many and varied contributions to the field of aeronautical and astronautical research. It is part biography, part history of NASA, part history of segregation, part history of the civil rights movement, part history of the Virginia peninsula, and part history of women's rights. It is absolutely fascinating.That being said, the book is very different from the movie, so don't go into it expecting them to be the same. The movie is deeply touching, but it is actually fairly inaccurate, and it has been pretty aggressively whitewashed (see re: the Kevin Costner character). I think it is good to both see the movie and read the book, because one of the critical differences, and the difference that I think is missed entirely by the movie (to its great detriment) is the way in which issues of segregation were actually tackled at Langley. The movie makes it appear that enlightened white men of power were responsible for Langley's integration, when in fact the integration of Langley was almost entirely borne organically and of necessity. The book does a good job of explaining this, whereas that aspect of the movie is almost entirely fictionalized. I thought the movie took away some of the women's victories in this area (Katherine Johnson, for example, never went to the "colored" bathroom. She just used the regular, unlabeled bathroom, and no one ever told her not to), but the book gives the women more credit for their small yet trailblazing acts of defiance.One other note: the book actually covers quite a bit of complex scientific detail, but it is entirely readable to the layperson.I highly, highly recommend this book.

This needs to be mandatory reading for every child in America before going to high school, but especially for every black girl. Of course, not everybody can be a NASA mathematician, engineer, or scientist, and astronaut may be a defunct career, but whatever anyone wants to be in life, this book will inspire them to pursue their goals and never let any external circumstances or obstacles keep them from achieving success. I'm happy to see that there is a Young Reader's Edition of the book now.It is true that the writing gets a bit bogged down in details at times, and some of the stories around the main subject matter are a bit disjointed. In particular, the story about Mary Jackson helping her son Levi with his soap box derby project in chapter nineteen breaks off partway through to focus on Mary at work, then picks up the narrative about the derby many pages later. And that chapter does not reach a real conclusion. But the criticisms of the book in some of the negative reviews here on Amazon are unwarranted. It is a fascinating account of a side of NASA that I not only never heard of while growing up in the 60s and 70s, but I never even suspected existed.Imagine if in all three seasons of Star Trek, the original series with Captain Kirk, every time the camera was on Lieutenant Uhura, her image had been edited out, and all of her lines of dialog had been displayed as subtitles instead of us hearing her. Then imagine that only now, for the first time, a fully-restored version of those episodes were released, and finally we could be see and hear the amazing and capable black woman working as an equal among equals on the bridge of the Enterprise.That is the impact of this story on me, and on countless others.Read this book. If it takes longer than you're used to for a book this long, bear with it. It's worth it, I assure you.The movie is wonderful, but as it says on the poster, the film is based on a true story. This book is the true story. I recommend experiencing both. The movie for its emotional impact, and the book for the full untold story, only a fraction of which made it up on the big screen.