Hidden Figures

Having loved the film of the same name, I was delighted to find the book devote so many chapters to the lives of these women at Langley during and just after WWII. The book goes deeper as you would expect in a historical narrative, but it also goes much broader than the movie. It includes fascinating accounts of women like the brilliant Dorothy Hoover who helped design wings for jet planes.

The author holds in tension two compelling aspects of these stories: the struggle against segregation, sexism, and the "stubborn underbrush of low expectations" alongside the remarkable account of these technologists, in their prime, good at their jobs who worked on some of the most incredible human endeavors of the twentieth century.