Free for All IS hard. But empowering, too. I was going to go with two very different, non-fiction, books for my recommendations, but it turns out that the first of them,
Gorillas in the Mist, by Farley Mowat, a great Canadian writer, is not currently available in the US in an eBook edition, so I'll pass for now.
The second, however, is a wonderful best seller (something I would usually avoid.) I've seen the movie, but now I want to read the book:
Hidden Figures, by Margot Lee Shetterly.
Amazon (and Goodreads) description:
Spoiler:
The #1 New York Times bestseller
The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space. Soon to be 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 a shot 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 they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country’s future.
GoodReads (same description as the Amazon one above)
Amazon: $10.99
Audible: $12.97 WhisperSync, or 1 credit.
Kobo US: $10.99
Amazon UK: £5.74
Audible UK: £2.99 WhisperSync
(That UK price, especially with WhisperSync, is a really good deal!)
Overdrive: Both audio and eBook versions available.
The book is 373 pages long, or nearly 11 hours of Audible book. It has gotten rave reviews, and especially by those who have seen the movie and find the book even more compelling. We don't have a "Non-Fiction" category this year, so here's our chance to rectify that.
