The #1 New York Times

bestseller

The phenomenal true

story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel

some of America’s greatest achievements in space—a powerful, revelatory history

essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern

America. The basis for the smash Academy Award-nominated

film starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten

Dunst, and Kevin Costner.

Before John Glenn

orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated

female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and

adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and

astronauts, into space.

Among these

problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women,

some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to

teaching math in the South’s segregated public schools, they were called into

service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America’s aeronautics

industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these

overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they

answered Uncle Sam’s call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating,

high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory.

Even as Virginia’s 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 the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the

Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens.

Starting in World War

II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space

Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan,

Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American

women who participated in some of NASA’s greatest successes. It chronicles

their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances

and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future.

-WINNER OF

ANISFIELD-WOLF AWARD FOR NONFICTION

-WINNER BLACK CAUCUS OF AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION BEST NONFICTION BOOK

-WINNER NAACP IMAGE AWARD BEST NONFICTION BOOK

-WINNER NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING AND MEDICINE COMMUNICATION

AWARD