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

Margot Lee Shetterly

Now turned into a bestselling movie, Hidden Figures tells the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped to win the space race. Known as "human computers," they used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets and astronauts into space. Even as Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley's all-black "West Computing" group helped America achieve one of things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

This edition also includes a section of plates in the middle, an "about the author" profile and a reading group guide along with an author interview.