From World War II through NASA’s golden age, four African-American women confidently and courageously stepped into the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (now known as NASA).

Their job? To provide the mathematical calculations that would help increase airplane production during wartime and eventually send the United States into space for the very first time. Hidden Figures follows the stories of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, who participated in some of the United States’ greatest aeronautic successes. These women lived through and persevered against the backdrop of some of the biggest movements ever to shape our nation’s history: the Civil Right era, the Space Race, and the fight for gender equality. With photographs and rich historical detail, Margot Lee Shetterly brings to life the struggles these four women, and others, overcame to forever change the face of air and space travel.

From the back cover of the 2016 paperback edition