Hidden figures : the untold true story of four African-American women who helped launch our nation into space

Shetterly, Margot Lee (author.). Lee Shetterly, Margot. Hidden figures. Adaptation of (expression) (Added Author).

Summary: Before John Glenn orbited the Earth or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as "Human Computers," calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws, these "colored computers," as they were known, used slide rules, adding machines, and pencil and paper to support America's fledgling aeronautics industry, and helped write the equations that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Drawing on the oral histories of scores of these "computers," personal recollections, interviews with NASA executives and engineers, archival documents, correspondence, and reporting from the era, Hidden Figures recalls America's greatest adventure and NASA's groundbreaking successes through the experiences of five spunky, courageous, intelligent, determined, and patriotic women: Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, Christine Darden, and Gloria Champine. Moving from World War II through NASA's golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the women's rights movement, Hidden Figures interweaves a history of scientific achievement and technological innovation with the intimate stories of five women whose work forever changed the world -- and whose lives show how out of one of America's most painful histories came one of its proudest moments.

Item details

ISBN: 9780062662385
ISBN: 0062662384
ISBN: 9780062662378
ISBN: 0062662376
ISBN: 9780606396233
ISBN: 0606396233
Physical Description: print
231 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
Edition: Young readers' edition.
Publisher: New York, NY : Harper, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2016]
Copyright: ©2016

Contents / Notes

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-218) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Setting the scene -- A door opens -- Mobilization -- A new Beginning -- The double V -- The "colored" computers -- War birds -- The duration -- Breaking barriers -- No limits -- The area rule -- An exceptional mind -- Turbulence -- Progress -- Young, gifted, and black -- What a difference a day makes -- Writing the textbook on space -- With all deliberate speed -- Model behavior -- Degrees of freedom -- Out of the past, the future -- America is for everybody -- One small step.
Target Audience Note:	Ages 8-12.

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