Hidden Figures

This is the book that the 2016 movie Hidden Figures was based upon. It's a fascinating and highly readable history of the black women mathematicians who worked at NACA/NASA beginning in WWII 1940s. It tells the stories of some of the individual women who went to work as “computers” and made their way into careers as mathematicians and engineers. The book also looks at the social forces in the United States that made such careers possible at a time and a place where segregation was violently enforced in all areas of life.

The book has extensive notes and a bibliography.