-
Hidden Figures
- The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Cultural & Regional
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $39.92
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Hidden Figures Young Readers' Edition
- By: Margot Lee Shetterly
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 4 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This edition of Margot Lee Shetterly’s acclaimed book is perfect for young students. It's the powerful story of four African-American female mathematicians at NASA who helped achieve some of the greatest moments in our space program. 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.
-
-
Wow!!! Great story.
- By Anonymous User on 12-23-16
-
My Remarkable Journey
- A Memoir
- By: Katherine Johnson, Joylette Hylick, Katherine Moore
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The remarkable woman at heart of the smash New York Times best seller and Oscar-winning film Hidden Figures tells the full story of her life, including what it took to work at NASA, help land the first man on the moon, and live through a century of turmoil and change.
-
-
Amazing Woman, Interesting Life
- By Grace on 08-20-21
By: Katherine Johnson, and others
-
Code Girls
- The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II
- By: Liza Mundy
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recruited by the US Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than 10,000 women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of codebreaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them.
-
-
A less known story of American women in WWII
- By Elisabeth Carey on 03-17-18
By: Liza Mundy
-
Failure Is Not an Option
- Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond
- By: Gene Kranz
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race.
-
-
Excellent Book!
- By Kevin on 02-19-13
By: Gene Kranz
-
To Kill a Mockingbird
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Sissy Spacek
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep south - and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred, available now for the first time as a digital audiobook. One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the 20th century by librarians across the country.
-
-
It's all about timing and time
- By Fletch on 08-02-14
By: Harper Lee
-
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
- By: Rebecca Skloot
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than 60 years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects.
-
-
Many stories in one
- By Ryan on 04-14-12
By: Rebecca Skloot
-
Hidden Figures Young Readers' Edition
- By: Margot Lee Shetterly
- Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
- Length: 4 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This edition of Margot Lee Shetterly’s acclaimed book is perfect for young students. It's the powerful story of four African-American female mathematicians at NASA who helped achieve some of the greatest moments in our space program. 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.
-
-
Wow!!! Great story.
- By Anonymous User on 12-23-16
-
My Remarkable Journey
- A Memoir
- By: Katherine Johnson, Joylette Hylick, Katherine Moore
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The remarkable woman at heart of the smash New York Times best seller and Oscar-winning film Hidden Figures tells the full story of her life, including what it took to work at NASA, help land the first man on the moon, and live through a century of turmoil and change.
-
-
Amazing Woman, Interesting Life
- By Grace on 08-20-21
By: Katherine Johnson, and others
-
Code Girls
- The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II
- By: Liza Mundy
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Recruited by the US Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than 10,000 women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of codebreaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them.
-
-
A less known story of American women in WWII
- By Elisabeth Carey on 03-17-18
By: Liza Mundy
-
Failure Is Not an Option
- Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond
- By: Gene Kranz
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 18 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Gene Kranz was present at the creation of America's manned space program and was a key player in it for three decades. As a flight director in NASA's Mission Control, Kranz witnessed firsthand the making of history. He participated in the space program from the early days of the Mercury program to the last Apollo mission, and beyond. He endured the disastrous first years when rockets blew up and the United States seemed to fall further behind the Soviet Union in the space race.
-
-
Excellent Book!
- By Kevin on 02-19-13
By: Gene Kranz
-
To Kill a Mockingbird
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Sissy Spacek
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Harper Lee’s Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep south - and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred, available now for the first time as a digital audiobook. One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than 40 languages, sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the 20th century by librarians across the country.
-
-
It's all about timing and time
- By Fletch on 08-02-14
By: Harper Lee
-
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
- By: Rebecca Skloot
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Bahni Turpin
- Length: 12 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than 60 years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects.
-
-
Many stories in one
- By Ryan on 04-14-12
By: Rebecca Skloot
-
The Woman Who Smashed Codes
- A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies
- By: Jason Fagone
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1912, at the height of World War I, brilliant Shakespeare expert Elizebeth Smith went to work for an eccentric tycoon on his estate outside Chicago. The tycoon had close ties to the US government, and he soon asked Elizebeth to apply her language skills to an exciting new venture: code breaking. There she met the man who would become her husband, groundbreaking cryptologist William Friedman. Though she and Friedman are in many ways the Adam and Eve of the NSA, Elizebeth's story, incredibly, has never been told.
-
-
Fascinating book about someone you never heard of!
- By Bonny on 01-24-18
By: Jason Fagone
-
The Martian
- By: Andy Weir
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton
- Length: 10 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet.
-
-
I love Wil Wheaton but why not R. C. Bray?
- By L. Newman on 01-11-20
By: Andy Weir
-
Rise of the Rocket Girls
- The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars
- By: Nathalia Holt
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 1940s and '50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible.
-
-
Struggles In Space Exploration
- By Sara on 06-11-16
By: Nathalia Holt
-
The Radium Girls
- The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women
- By: Kate Moore
- Narrated by: Angela Brazil
- Length: 15 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The year was 1917. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks, and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous - the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. They were the radium girls. As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses.
-
-
A simple way to improve the robotic narration
- By B. C. French on 06-07-17
By: Kate Moore
-
Go Set a Watchman
- A Novel
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Reese Witherspoon
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, best-selling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014.
-
-
To Kill A Mockingbird vs Go Set A Watchman
- By Sara on 07-15-15
By: Harper Lee
-
The Clan of the Cave Bear
- Earth's Children, Book 1
- By: Jean M. Auel
- Narrated by: Sandra Burr
- Length: 22 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This novel of awesome beauty and power is a moving saga about people, relationships, and the boundaries of love. Through Jean M. Auel’s magnificent storytelling we are taken back to the dawn of modern humans, and with a girl named Ayla we are swept up in the harsh and beautiful Ice Age world they shared with the ones who called themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear.
-
-
Production and Narration didn't quite ruin it
- By nolagal on 07-28-14
By: Jean M. Auel
-
A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts
- By: Andrew Chaikin
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 23 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Audie Award, History/Biography, 2016. On the night of July 20, 1969, our world changed forever when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Based on in-depth interviews with 23 of the 24 moon voyagers, as well as those who struggled to get the program moving, A Man on the Moon conveys every aspect of the Apollo missions with breathtaking immediacy and stunning detail.
-
-
Long, comforting book on moon exploration
- By Mark on 06-17-16
By: Andrew Chaikin
-
A Woman of No Importance
- The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
- By: Sonia Purnell
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: "She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her." The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill's "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare." She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and - despite her prosthetic leg - helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it.
-
-
Maybe it’s the narrator?
- By Andrea on 09-18-19
By: Sonia Purnell
-
The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon
- By: Todd Zwillich
- Narrated by: Todd Zwillich, Angelo Di Loreto
- Length: 3 hrs and 32 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Without John C. Houbolt, a mid-level engineer at NASA, Apollo 11 would never have made it to the moon. Top NASA engineers on the project, including Werner Von Braun, strongly advocated for a single, huge spacecraft to travel to the moon, land, and return to Earth. It's the scenario used in 1950s cartoons and horror movies about traveling to outer space. Houbolt had another idea: Lunar Orbit Rendezvous. LOR would link two spacecraft in orbit while the crafts were travelling at 3,600 miles an hour around the moon. His plan was ridiculed and considered unthinkable.
-
-
Call me a nerd... But darn-it, I still love learning about the history of NASA 🚀
- By C. White on 07-05-19
By: Todd Zwillich
-
The Half-Life of Marie Curie
- By: Lauren Gunderson
- Narrated by: Kate Mulgrew, Francesca Faridany
- Length: 1 hr and 19 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1912, scientist Marie Curie spent two months on the British seaside at the home of Hertha Ayrton, an accomplished mathematician, inventor, and suffragette. At the time, Curie was in the throes of a scandal in France over her affair with Paul Langevin, which threatened to overshadow the accomplishment of her second Nobel Prize. Performed by Kate Mulgrew and Francesca Faridany at the Minetta Lane Theatre, this play by Lauren Gunderson is an ode to two remarkable women.
-
-
A missed opportunity and a terrible depiction
- By LadyTanis1 on 12-16-19
By: Lauren Gunderson
-
The Girls of Atomic City
- The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
- By: Denise Kiernan
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, consuming more electricity than New York City. But to most of the world, the town did not exist. Thousands of civilians - many of them young women from small towns across the South - were recruited to this secret city, enticed by solid wages and the promise of war-ending work. Kept very much in the dark, few would ever guess the true nature of the tasks they performed each day in the hulking factories in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains.
-
-
More than Just the Girls
- By Jane Mcdowell on 01-14-14
By: Denise Kiernan
-
Invisible Man
- A Novel
- By: Ralph Ellison
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 18 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of 20th-century African-American life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching - yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places.
-
-
Sometimes it is best not to awaken them...
- By Darwin8u on 03-01-20
By: Ralph Ellison
Publisher's Summary
The phenomenal true story of the Black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space. Now a major motion picture 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 shots 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 as they faced challenges, forged alliances, and used their intellects to change their own lives - and their country's future.
Critic Reviews
"Robin Miles narrates the true story of four Black women whose work as mathematicians helped break the sound barrier, and set the stage for space exploration.... Miles warmly profiles these hard-working women and their significant contributions to a field still dominated by white men.... Miles's inflections, rhythm, and pace move the story forward in a fascinating timeline of events." ( AudioFile)
Featured Article: The Best Audiobooks to Listen to While Walking
Whether you walk for your health, a form of transportation, or to exercise a pet, you can get some mental mileage with your steps when you take a great audiobook along. These listens make the perfect walking companions. They can teach you about any topic that catches your fancy, or transport you to ancient and fantastical worlds. Whether you're on a treadmill, touring the neighborhood, or going to work, these are the best audiobooks for walking.
What listeners say about Hidden Figures
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jami
- 02-05-18
Interesting Subject
The subject matter was excellent and well researched; I was fascinated with the stories of these women and their contributions to the space program.
That being said, I agree with several other reviewers who noted that is hard to fully engage with these women's stories because of the way the information is presented. It more like a documentary than a personal account, so you don't feel a personal connection with these fascinating ladies. Also, the author jumps around frequently, which doesn't help with the story presentation. I listened to this on audio, but I think that the movie may help with the emotional connection. I probably will see the movie at some point, now that I have this background.
While this is a story about the contributions of the Black women, these women also helped other women, regardless of their race, with their careers, which is also noteworthy. Even today, there are stories about companies having trouble recruiting women for the STEM fields; without these women's contributions, there would be even fewer women in these fields today.
It is astounding to think of the trust that everyone had to place in the calculations of these human computers. Lives depended on their accuracy, and they certainly came through. It is worth noting that it took some time to get used to the use of the term "computers" to refer to people instead of machines.
There was a great quote in this book: "The best thing about breaking a barrier is that it won't have to be broken again." I love that quote and what it represents. There was another important observation in this book near the end, and that was when the author brings out that these women do not want to stand out for their differences, but their talents; and that is as it should be.
86 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kate Maxwell
- 10-24-16
Fascinating story, poorly told
I really wanted to love this book. As a female in a male dominated technical field I thought it would be bread and butter for me. Instead, I found the narrative structure confusing. The jumps between people and time and barrage of names distracted and lessened the impact of the story's relevance and power.
126 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Tyan Jacker
- 03-06-17
Coulda Shoulda
I was born in Hampton, Virginia in 1959. My father was stationed at Langley at the time and worked peripherally on the space program. I would love to have been able to pick his brain on the subject but unfortunately he passed several years ago. It was with that backdrop that I picked up this with great enthusiasm. I was hoping that this story would give these women the rich treatment they deserve but it falls short. It just feels like someone reading a text book to me and you never really get to fully know these women. You find out what happened to them and the events that shaped their lives but you never really get to know them, not really. Don't get me wrong, as a historical text it delves into fascinating and very important issues but it just never really lives up to what it could have been.
50 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Morgana
- 10-09-16
Black Herstory
I am a fifty-seven year old black woman who was raised during the sixties and seventies. My father taught his children to learn about their roots and to hold themselves with dignity. I attended classes on African history in High school, but until now the story of black female mathematicians was completely unknown to me.
This the story of young women of color who joined NACA before it became NASA in the war years. How they were called 'computers' who worked equations in order to bring about proper construction for airplanes such as the B-29 Super Fortress and many others.
That alone should be enough to draws in the listener, the sheer scope of what these women accomplished during the time of segregation is simply amazing.
Robin Miles reading gives the story an elegant air, the reader will not be disappointed.
261 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Cynthia
- 09-18-16
Great Story of a History Obscured
I live in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, where NASA's JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) is hidden at the top of the Arroyo Seco. Riding the Metro Gold Line east to historic Monrovia from Los Angeles' lovingly maintained Art Deco/Mission Revival style Union Station, you'd never guess the gleaming light rail tracks cross and recross secret washes and gullies where the engines that would take people to the moon and beyond were tested.
NASA didn't just hide its rockets - it hid its people, too, and across the country. "Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race" (2016) is an exploration of Black women in the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, 1915 - 1958) and its successor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), especially at Langley Air Force Base.
Langley is by Hampton and Newport News, Virginia. Jim Crow laws - the so-called state law "separate but equal" laws - were in force for the entirety of NACA. Langley followed state laws, which meant that highly educated and talented women from then Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) were calculating ballistic trajectories during World War II - and then eating lunch in the "Colored" area. Black women calculators were absolutely crucial to the war effort, but couldn't use the same bathrooms as their White colleagues. Margot Lee Shetterly's writing is so empathetic that I felt the burn of anger that super human computer Katherine Johnson and her coworkers felt.
I love that the book has such a thorough discussion of actual segregation, and the key role that Thurgood Marshall (1908 - 1993) had in ending it. When the US Supreme Court abolished separate Black schools in Brown v Board of Education (1954) 347 US 483, some school districts in Virginia closed for years rather than integrate - which meant that some children, Black and White, were denied years of schooling. Just the logistics of being a working mother without child care must have been daunting. Shetterly reminds us that Brown and the forced integration in Little Rock, AR, were not the end of educational discrimination - they were the beginning of an end that hasn't happened yet.
Shetterly's book is pretty good on the social issues, but I found it hard to follow the women's lives. The book jumped from topic to topic and different eras. There's such a great discussion of Black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha that when I came across their booth at my daughter's college fair this week, I was awed. AKA didn't come up until the last part of the book, even though it was part of the women's lives from the beginning.
I was disappointed the physics and chemistry of flight, missiles, rocketry and space exploration weren't well explained. Shetterly lightly addresses what human calculators did. Nathalia Holt's "Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us from Missiles to the Moon" (2016), the story of women computers at Southern California's JPL, has a great discussion of the science. The difference might be because "Hidden Figures" was optioned and filmed as a major motion picture before it was published as a book. The book was released September 6, 2016; and the movie is being released either at Christmas, 2016 or January 13, 2017 - after this review was written.
Even though I found parts of the book a little meandering and lacking in depth, I'm giving the book and audible performance my highest rating and recommendation. It's a great story, and one that deserves a listen.
[If this review helped, please press YES. Thanks!]
291 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Carol
- 01-16-17
Ooportunity Missed
This could have been a great book. The story is a little-known one. Unfortunately, we never really get to know these amazing women. There is more time spent on the ills of segregation than on developing the lives of these incredible "computers". Their contributions were enormous, but they are marginalized in this book for the sake of constant reminders of the hard times of that era. I totally agree...segregation was horrible. I can't imagine the hardships these women and their families went through. But, once we had a lesson about their courage and determination in the face of great odds, I would have loved to learn more about them, what they did, and how they did it. This book never took me there. The author missed a huge opportunity to tell us all about their accomplishments--women who helped to shape the future of this country's air and space programs.
The narrator was monotonous, and I had a hard time staying engaged. There was no enthusiasm. Every word was spoken in the same flat tone. As much as I looked forward to listening to this book, I'm terribly disappointed--I was bored. I can only hope the movie will be better.
202 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jonathan Soyt
- 02-28-18
I wanted to like this...
Boy, I wanted to like this. Feminism! Black power! Women in STEM! What’s not to love?
Ugh, the story is not to love. It’s confusingly written and makes a would-be compelling subject droll. I’m happy this book was written and thrilled it got picked up by Hollywood, but I cannot recommend the writing.
48 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ronald
- 09-29-16
Good story, poorly written.
This is based on the story of black women mathematicians at NASA and its predecessor agency in the 50s 60s and 70s. It's a really good story, but the writing is full of clichés extended metaphors and and digressions which seem to be random and detract from the overall flow of the narrative. It's a shame.
44 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Colleen Russell
- 12-19-16
Right message wrong messenger
This is an important history that needs to be told, but it's not well written. It's dry and not well organized.
43 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 10-28-16
Read this book before you see the movie!
so much of our history is hidden from us. This is an extremely good example of how the contributions of young black women in the forties all the way up through current times. For what reason, I have no idea. These women are so inspirational regardless of your color or gender.
88 people found this helpful