Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race
Registered by engelsman of Leiden, Zuid-Holland Netherlands on 11/19/2016
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally confined to teaching in the South's segregated public schools, they were called into service during World War II, when America's aeronautics industry faced a dire shortage of people with the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked intellects could access jobs worthy of their skills -- and the thrilling, trailblazing project in progress at NASA's Langley facility.
Following the astonishing careers of four African American women -- Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden -- Hidden Figures moves from World War II through NASA's golden age, the Space Race, the civil rights era and the women's rights movement. Over nearly three decades, even as segregation laws divided them from their white counterparts, Langley's all-black computing group built a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War and complete domination of the heavens. An untold history of our greatest adventure, their stories would forever change the world.
This is a very interesting book, but as a non-American, non-black, and non-woman I was a bit lost in some of the minutiae of small town American life under the yoke of segregation and inequality intended to evoke some degree of nostalgia, good and bad, in the reader. That's not a fault of the book, which has indeed increased my knowledge of a distant place and time that has been largely not talked about until recently.
Journal Entry 2 by engelsman at ESA ESTEC in Noordwijk, Zuid-Holland Netherlands on Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Released 7 yrs ago (11/23/2016 UTC) at ESA ESTEC in Noordwijk, Zuid-Holland Netherlands
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
left in a kitchenette