Hidden Figures

3.5 stars.

A very interesting and important history. Glad that I did the audiobook, because the narration was also great. The writing, however, was a bit dry for my tastes.

The content of this book is fascinating and important, however, it was delivered in such a boring way. I struggled through this book. Two stars for the content and the importance of the tale, but ultimately, I did not enjoy it.

Oh man this was disappointing. I wanted to love this book because it's about badass women of color (!!!) but damn it was so dry and boring. The message of this book is very important but I didn't feel that the author narrated it very well. There were some interesting bits but overall I felt very underwhelmed.

This book didn't bring me joy, so I didn't finish it. I'll just watch the movie

Oh man this was disappointing. I wanted to love this book because it's about badass women of color (!!!) but damn it was so dry and boring. The message of this book is very important but I didn't feel that the author narrated it very well. There were some interesting bits but overall I felt very underwhelmed.

This book didn't bring me joy, so I didn't finish it. I'll just watch the movie

Inspiring. I tried to think of the perfect words to describe this book. The women in this book were trailblazers, for their race, for their gender, for the world.

I had never even heard about these women until I heard about the movie that came out based on this book. I often find it hard to think about how long modern technology has been around. I forget that we walked on the moon over 50 years ago, and we've been flying for 100+ years.

I really can't say much about this, but READ THIS BOOK! It's a look into a part of history that I think has been immensely overlooked. I think these women played a huge factor on the sidelines of the Civil Rights Movement, and they most definitely played a huge factor in WWII, the Space Race, and the Cold War.

This is a gorgeous picture book and a great history to share with all children and adults alike! I read this as a Kindle eBook from Kindle Freetime Unlimited and it was done well, double-tap to enlarge and clear images. I'm glad to share this one with my children.

I really wanted to like this book. But, I hate to say it, I think Ill watch the movie and see if it's better. Sigh. The info and stories could have been great, but it was presented in a very disorganized time line, jumping back and forth between years, events, AND people. I couldn't keep anything straight. Which is a shame, because these womens' stories really, really, need to be recognized and known.

This is the book that the 2016 movie Hidden Figures was based upon. It's a fascinating and highly readable history of the black women mathematicians who worked at NACA/NASA beginning in WWII 1940s. It tells the stories of some of the individual women who went to work as “computers” and made their way into careers as mathematicians and engineers. The book also looks at the social forces in the United States that made such careers possible at a time and a place where segregation was violently enforced in all areas of life.

The book has extensive notes and a bibliography.

This read more like an informational book rather than a story. It was interesting. I am proud of these woman. As a woman, I can relate to the struggles in a technical field, but these women had to endure struggles of not only being women, but black woman.

I liked this, but it was such a dry audio book I stopped in about the middle of it.

I read this book after seeing the movie. It is definitely more journalistic rather than non-fiction, but excellent writing. I am so impressed with the author's investigative journalism. She told a story that needed to be told. What amazing women these are! I also hold a degree in mathematics and got so excited reading about their love for their work and the “behind the scenes” work that gave them purpose.

Why did it take me so long to read this?! It is, of course, amazing and inspirational! I got really teary many times especially when Shetterly talks about Katherine Johnson's love of Star Trek and Nichelle Nichols and Martin Luther King, Jr's conversation about quitting the show. I'm a big nerd.

So important - everyone interested in science, history, and feminism should read this!

(Goodreads rating override: 4 stars for the importance of the content, not for how I “liked it”. I didn't actually like it. More on that later.)

This is important material. And to the best of my knowledge, no other book covers half of this, so I'm going to say: read it. Don't expect to enjoy it, and DON'T try the audiobook, but do read it. Please. We need you to. Because every reminder we get of the humiliations suffered by blacks in this country, every word that hits our hearts, every description of the putrid vile subhumans running Virginia in the fifties and sixties, is one more vote in November to oust the putrid vile subhumans running Washington today. (I write this in 2018 but by November I mean “every fucking November for the rest of your life”).

Hidden Figures is several books in one. Primarily it's the story of the human “computers”—mostly Black women with highly advanced mathematical knowledge and skills—who invisibly and reliably made the calculations that resulted in not only the U.S. Space Program but also the aircraft that won WWII, the first supersonic flight, and the refinements that led to today's commercial air travel. Also primarily it's the story of racism, bigotry, hatred, and pure evil that still exists in the US today. Shetterly intertwines stories of the everyday hurdles that Blacks had to undergo, and she makes you feel them. All of this is important material.

Unfortunately, the book itself is less than readable. To borrow a line from my friend Chris, a line I fully intended to start with: “I so wanted to like this book.” I couldn't. It's choppy, clunky, awkwardly written. Intrusive similes; rococo language; jumpetyjumpy timeline with too many characters (major and minor). I started with the audiobook but gave it up; switched to ebook and still found myself struggling to keep track of who what when where. The material kept me going despite the writing.

There's not much to say about Hidden Figures that hasn't already been said, but I still found the story of how African American female mathematicians left behind their families and hometowns to seek their fortune doing calculations on bomber planes to win WWII, in a time that there was still segregated lunch tables and African American women could expect to make a pittance. It's amazing to read about the women, who despite these circumstances, forcibly integrated grade schools to earn their PhDs and persevered for years to be recognized as engineers and included on literary papers. I liked that Shetterly chose to focus on a few key characters as a way of humanizing the story, although I agree that the character development was pretty weak, and especially the side characters tended to blend together.

As a side note, I DNF'ed the young adult version and, having read the real thing, I completely stand behind that choice. What were they thinking? Young adults are not more attracted to drier books stripped of characters.

Actual Rating: 3.25

I had to read this for school. I thought this would be a topic that interested me, but I was quite wrong. I was bored and uninterested throughout much of the novel. While this was bad enough, the writing itself irritated me.

There were so many characters mentioned that I simply lost track of them. The author would introduce a character for a paragraph and then not speak of them for another 30 pages. This became confusing when I tried to keep track of all of the characters. In addition, there was some random information provided about the characters that was ultimately irrelevant to the progression of the novel.

Of course, the topic of this novel is important. It talked about a lot of things that I had not known before. However, it was not engaging enough for me to enjoy it.

I still intend to see the movie, however this is one book that I will not be revisiting.

Ooops! I finished this like a weeks ago but forgot to update goodreads.

I really really liked this, she did a great job of interweaving narrative and historical facts.

Inspiring, enlightening, educational, and sometimes technical heavy read but recommended.

This is an interesting one for me to review. I'm ultimately giving it 3.5 stars. I actually really enjoyed it! But you know who would enjoy it more? My Ph.D. aerospace engineering professor husband that studies fluid dynamics and how air moves over wind turbine blades and airplane wings. Because I think he would appreciate it more.

I ordered the book after the two of us went to see the movie. I loved the movie because of badass women breaking barriers and being awesome, and he was really excited that he had been to Langley before and had seen that wind tunnel that Mary Jackson works in during one of the early scenes in person. We left the theater and agreed that we would like to learn more. I was not disappointed at all by the book. There's a lot of stuff in here, and it's not that long, and there were lots of things I didn't know about. I don't know that I really have any complaints about the book either, any reason why I shouldn't give it more stars, I just know that space and math and engineering are not really my jam. Still, I did enjoy this a lot, and I'm glad I read it.

Now to set it (back) on husband's nightstand.

I enjoyed reading this book. It is a fascinating story, but I felt the telling of that story was a little unsteady at times; too often chapters would veer off to the left or right before coming back on track.

I read this after seeing (and loving) the movie! I really enjoyed getting a fuller picture of these women's lives and the community surrounding them. (Also, I'm not here to be like “The movie changed things! It wasn't 100% accurate!” Like I totally get eliding things to make it fit into 2 hours, I'm here for it.) But it was even more impressive in the book since it maps a longer arc toward change, beginning during WWII and earlier. (Also Kevin Costner never took down that segregated bathroom sign, Katherine Johnson just started ignoring the sign.)

Anyway, a great, engaging read whether or not you saw the movie.

Also I have to say I'm not one of those people who's like, into space per se but I still really enjoyed this. If you are a person who just loves the idea of space/NASA/etc (I know you're out there), you'll probably get a +1 enjoyment from this.

Such a good book - inspiring and uplifting, though with thoughtful criticism and analysis of the periods covered. I did struggle a bit with the more scientific aspects of the book - engineering and physics are probably the least interesting subjects to me - but it didn't subtract from my enjoyment. Looking forward to seeing the movie!

I was expecting this to be a little more like the movie, but it had a wider focus, looking at the history of black female “computers” at NASA starting in the 1940s until the late 1970s. (It also didn't focus in any degree on white characters/people, which was refreshing after the movie's Costner nonsense.) While the movie makes it clear that these three women weren't the first or only ones doing their jobs, I definitely appreciate the context this provides.

I liked it, a little repetitious but the work of these women was important and should be known better.
There were women doing similar work at the Manhattan project and many running the machines at Oak Ridge.

Is the story of a handful of remarkable black women who helped move American aerospace technology forward. But their stories aren't isolated achievements and author Margot Lee Shetterly places us in a larger historical context and intertwines these stories to show how America began to define itself as well.

World War 2 opened the doors to women fulfilling new roles made available as the men went off to war. Dorothy Vaughan is there to help build better planes to fight the war overseas. When Russia put a man in space the Cold War threat opened the doors to countless black women like Katherine Johnson who still needed to navigate the indignities of colored washrooms and separate cafeteria tables.

It was eye-opening not only in the sense of shining a light on a long overlooked cadre of women working at NACA which would eventually become NASA, but also the parallel track of black education in the face of segregation. Of black universities, scholarships funded not only by black sororities but government institutions looking to “benevolently” enforce segregation, and the achievements of these women who faced off against the patriarchy and racism, worked inhuman hours, all while raising successful children. Can't wait to see the movie that came out of nowhere to beat Rogue One opening weekend.